NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

3 November 1953

Dearest Fido:

What glorious news that we can hope to see you and
Doris! Your letter arrived this morning, and Susan will be as
delighted as I am to know it. Since we are going to have to be
away over the weekend following your arrival, why don't the two
of you plan to come up to see us almost at once. That will let
our affairs be settled at once, and you can have your New York
time later. We take the train from N.Y. Thursday night, so that
any time until then can be ours together here. I shall also have
to be in town on the 17th, and we might have a farewell embrace
then. How good it will be! My tail already wags. Do persuade
Doris to come with you; she most definitely needs a change to
preserve her sanity.

I had forgotten to put on the enclosed letters the
instructions to forward to London, because of Scarlett, and perhaps
providentially also forgot to put on enough extra postage to convey
it at all. So it, too, came back this morning, and I resend along
with this, in case you wish to discuss the matter with her.

No report from Washington yet on the 2nd Folio, but
my own checking shows (a) it is definitely not the first issue; and
(b) and (amusingly) that our second copy of the 2nd Folio also has
the double p in Coppie. So there are at least three copies of this
state, and I suspect many more too, unless we are unbelievably lucky.
Did I tell you, by the way, that Prouty loaned his copy of _THE PLAYER'S_
BOY to Dawson (the Folger expert) since he was so delighted with his
dip into it that he wanted to go on. "Definitely not the ordinary
historical novel," he wrote Prouty. I told him to keep it, and have
given Prouty a replacement. I enclose a little blurb for the book out
of a catalogue I recently received.

Delighted that you agree to give the Institute the money
for binding in boards. I shall tell them to go ahead. I am not sure
whether you meant the additional gift besides the 200 for binding, and
therefore will say I can't answer that until I see you on your visit
here.

Pick a plane with a good tail wind, and wag to help it
along.

Home phone: New Haven Main 4-6223
Office: State 7-3131, extension 2470

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON
233 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN • CONN

7 November 1953

Dearest Bryher:

The absence of a cable from you, and the
presence of a phonecall from John to Susan, gives me hope
of your actually arriving. It snowed last night like a
baby blizzard; it rains and is dour today. I only hope
your passage will not have been miserable. For the thought
of your coming makes the day tolerable and the future
bright.

I wrote you at Lowndes, and you may have
gotten it before you left. It was chiefly to say how much
we look forward to your visit, and how sorry we were that
our plans had long since been made for next weekend. That
is, we are taking a train at 11:40 in the evening, Thursday
to Rochester, and are returning from Buffalo by plane on
Sunday.

The best thing for you to do is to call me as
soon as you can after your arrival, and plan to come to New
Haven as soon as you can. We will be sorry if Doris can't
come up, but I think we might all have dinner and the evening
together on Thursday, until we entrain. But we do need time
together. Perhaps you could come up Monday or Tuesday night
and go down with us on Thursday. On one night when you are
here, more or less as if it were your one night, I can ask
in after the dinner the Proutys (so he can talk about Robert's
book), the Waiths perhaps, and the Hotsons. After Tuesday
afternoon I am more or less free with few interruptions. I
give you this only to ponder. Doris perhaps could come up
for one night and take a train back the next day if she can't
spare more. As for Thursday dinner in town I leave to you.
We can spend the evening at Pup's, or I can get tickets for
you all and us at Porgy and Bess which they say is excellent.
The Wolfs have written me urgently to know when they can see
you. If they want to give a little cocktail party for you,
better accept. They might have a reviewer or two in. It all
helps.

How marvelous it is that you are here, Fido. Stay
as long as you can manage it. Your kennel at Goodrich Street
is laid with fresh straw, and we will have a fine bone for you.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 November 1953

Dearest Fido:

Your plaintive cards reached us; so did a note from
Pup after your cable; and yesterday a letter from Hilda told me
that you had not gotten to Zuri at all but been hurled straight to
Geneva and hence home. I have not worried at not hearing from you,
though I am anxious to know how Walter is, since I imagine
you plunged on arrival into all the business accumulated as well
as the preliminaries of revision.

What a good thing it was to have our few minutes together
over the manuscript. Quite worth the whole trip it seemed to me,
for it is easier to discuss than to write such matters, when tone
of communication counts for so much. I have read the ms through
again, with even mounting pleasure. I am so honored at the dedica-
tion! And have no momentous suggestions to make from a second reading,
only a few comments for the hopper. One little prospect delights me:
let us by all means use Roman numerals for the chapter headings. That
is unless you want to add chapter titles to them, and I should not
try to make them up now. As for the title, I still like Fabula best
myself, but when the Wolf asked me if I had thought of anything, and
I mentioned Roman Wall he seemed to like it. I can think of only a
few new possibilities: Rim of Earth; Roads and Peace; or Not to
Understand. Rim of Earth I think is possible, though Wolf liked the Roman
Wall as precisely setting the piece.

When Susan read it she found the Felix shift to Julia a
little surprising; just possibly it could be extended on 147 where
Demetrius explains. On the other hand I think I rather overstated my
surprise that Felix was Christian, for on the second reading I saw where
you had prepared for this. I still think the Julia separation from
her brother could stand a sentence or two. Perhaps now that she is
cut off from her adopted Helvetia she reverts to the Roman situation
again. The aim would be to tie in the ending with page 8 of chapter I.
I think the Fabula strengthening remains important, and I wondered if
in Part II, pages 13-14, Fabula would naturally have come to Demetrius'
mind since the Valerius-Fabula episode is mentioned there. I also
think that the final page must tie in with Part II, page 121; and
perhaps also on page 123 for the talk with Demetrius. I think this
can be worked out, and the taking of Veria really is prepared for.
She is at least as much of a Fabula as he was ever to cling to, and the
Demetrius-Valerius conversation can be pointed in this direction. "I
made my peace" (p. 148) is not enough. If you want to put in a few
lines to heighten the plunder of Aventicum, page 139 is where it should
go. Only keep it in terms of his reaction to it.

2

Should we, by the way, just to tuck in all threads, make a little
mention of Aristo in the final chapter? I hate to lose a crocodile
down the river!

Two tiny queries: In chapter II, p. 11 do you mean Spurius or Severus, in line 16? And on page 147 of the second part, I found the sentence beginning "She is freeborn," etc, a little too syncopated, compressing too much, and rather jumbling Julia and Veria together. But this is the part you must work over anyhow.

Don't try to rush the changes in the text too much, since I
can have copies made directly here if you will send the ms in its new
form for the necessary pages only. But I should like at once, if you
can, the letter on why you wrote it and what you yourself feel it
means, to help me write the jacket material. For that **must** be done in
a fortnight at the latest in order to be ready for the salesmen's meeting
They do not need the text itself.

I go to Andover tomorrow to talk to an adult group there on
poetry, a balm to my friend Dudley Fitts who teaches at the academy,
and will take along some morceaux choisi from the Elizabethan books
for an exhibition they want for the boys who are now busily reading
the Elizabethans. I picked out some this afternoon, and will have to
type up the list now for the insurance people. I arranged the details
Friday.

I enclose the biography in the college newspaper for your
edification. Personally I found it a little lifeless, too much statement
without any sharpness of description. How much better you would have
done it! Don't save, but it is a curiosity anyhow.

"We had a lovely day on Thanksgiving, but it has been cold and gray the rest of the time, and we put some storm windows on this afternoon to keep out the chill. Friday night we saw a new play at the Shubert, supposedly a comedy on p.a., with two amusing burlesques of scenes on the couch; but the play was indifferent at best, and Franchot Tone who had the lead did not lead. Alas neither did anyone else. The sets were pretty, however; that was something.

All love as always. It was to wonderful to have you here, and
I only wish that if the cheek should need another treatment you would
come this side to have it done. It seems to me it would make very good
sense. They do good work on such things in the States, and it would be
easy to follow up on in the future if necessary.

Lorillard

C O P Y

20 December 1953

Dear Mr Hodgson:

There is no snow on the New England ground, but
the Christmas season is already in the air, even though an academic
like myself must wait until the university classes are over before
he can begin to send his greetings for the holidays and for the new
year.

You will remember that last year I wrote you of what
would have been the plans of the Bryher Foundation to make you an
official award in recognition of your achievements in poetry, had the
Foundation maintained its official life. But since it no longer
existed as such, it was impossible then to send you at one time what
would have been the full award; and I hope now that you will accept
from Mrs Bryher what is really another installment on it. It goes,
as you know, with her, as well as with my, admiration, and with our
combined hope that the coming year will be a happy one for you.

Sincerely yours,

21 December 1953

Dearest Bryher:

Just back from Philadelphia, and two letters from you to greet me. I am not surprised that the emotions are at sixes-and-sevens; it was inevitable. And you are right in thinking that work is the chief solution--though perhaps not for the moment, until after you have had your trip. Then? Or before? I suggest roughing out the Scilly book; I think you can transfer something to this, to make it very powerful. Storms are storms; the essence is the same: one only transforms the accidents of them. The trip? India or anywhere. I suspect Hollywood and Edith would not quite be the thing just now. Kenneth and Islay would be fine companions. But I am going to hold my Fido by the collar and whisper in her ear: do not, in a sort of defensive rebound, consider re-allying yourself formally to Kenneth. Of course I like him; but it simply would not do in the long run. Better to keep it this way, which is special and re-defined. We have spoken of this often, you know, as only we two can; and my opinion, for what it is worth, has not changed. You will remember too that I did not want you to make any similar gesture to Walter, as you thought of doing,; and of that I feel sure I was right. I told you to write me; I tell you to write me each day; you need to get things out, to organize them by putting them in order on paper. Am I suggesting the couch and myself like the old Doctor? Not quite. Yet the most of a series of hours does really come from what the speaker does for himself. You have been wonderfully kind to me with your confidence, and there is little we have not touched upon at one time or another. And with Hilda's letters to you, and yours to her, with all the other correspondences, including McA's novels etc., there is more than we have even talked about. It is not frightening to have these things known; it has been only a unpremeditated preparation for moments like this one. I should count on you in the same way, dear Fido. Let me serve.

I send this to Kusnacht, feeling perhaps that you will in the end slip there, and because a week with Brunner might be a good thing, and because, anyhow, Hilda can forward to wherever you are.

Now let me pick up the threads I did not tie in with my hurried Christmas note to you. First, I enclose copies of the blurbs I wrote about the book. If I jazzed it a little, it was only to help the Wolves -- the book of course will speak for itself. And I enclose also the letter about Hodgson (return when you have finished with it) and a copy of my letter to him, which I hope will meet your approval.

By the way, Prouty wanted me to call your attention to a new book on the Globe Theater, which includes every known view of it. He showed me, and it was quite impressive. You might like to see, even the Sands is behind you. The period of course is not behind you. The book:

31 December 1953

Dearest Bryher:

To New York again yesterday to finish up the work on
the new batch of Hawthorne letters, and your two letters of the 25th
and 37th were waiting for me at the office this morning.

I'm glad the Dana didn't offend. He did intrigue me,
his kind of life, so different in many ways from what I had expected
it to be, and so much more caught up in the duties of caste (not all
bad duties either) rather than in what life at sea had taught him.
And it seemed to me that if I were writing an introduction to his own
introduction to his life --after the event of his voyage, even if
treating of much before it -- what I must give was what this image of
himself actually was to lead to -- what was the ending to what must
have been to him, as he wrote his autobiographical sketch, the mystery
of the future. And then, when I could see what the future had been,
to try to explain the connection between the future and this present-
past of his autobiographical pages. Dana's own writing about himself,
here, was so dull, so lifeless compared to what he had put down at sea,
that it was an immense disappointment to me. Not really worth publish-
ing, I should have thought, expect in terms of his life for whatever
that was worth. It was worth something, in achievement if not in his
satisfaction; and it was worth something also as a symbol. That is
what I tried to make it, coupling it with the lucky accident of his
relationship to Henry Adams who is a nonpareil of his type, we thought,
and so he was until Dana's example gave him a similarity.

Looking at your Christmas from a distance, I was pleased
that Walter had recovered enough to join you for dinner; I had not
thought it likely that he could. But I can agree that it is probably as
well both for him and for you if you do not stay. He will slide into the
routine, and altho he has made a wonderful initial recovery of a sort,
the rest of the way back will be slower, I fear, and would be intimidated
by the constant reminder of how much farther he still has to go. This
is a little I suppose what has bothered Hilda; she had set up for her-
self a little island, and Walter has landed on it now; the direction of
her attentions must be divided, and she herself is a little self-conscious.

I am glad you have *abula* to turn to; it is a good thing
just now. As for *Ruan* you will know best whether or not that is for just
this moment. I should think it might be, even over an Indian scene, for
you have the whole landscape and seascape of memory to work thru, already
at the tendrils of your mind.

As for India, well if Kenneth and Islay can't, they can't

I suppose, and no help for it. The Capri disposal is important for them, as well as their moving. Oh dear, Fido, it did seem such a natural answer. But then why not Edith, stopping over with us for a while, and you could see the Fabula through the press, which would be a great help, and we could begin to rough out Ruan, which the Wolves do want in order to complete the trilogy. We think of boxing the three English books together, and offering them that way, in addition to Ruan by itself. For Christmas perhaps.

A nice letter, touching in its modesty as always, came today from Hodgson. I quote entire: "I am just as much at a loss to know how to thank Mrs. Bryher for her generosity, and you for yours, as I was last February. It is all so extraordinary. You will understand this, so I will leave it there."

"I had a little correspondence with Mrs Bryher last summer, when she wrote me of her visit to Scilly; the Cornish coast -- in its ancient history--has long been a haunt of my imagination, and Mrs Bryher's visits to those parts were particularly awakening."

"I trust you are enjoying a good holiday."

Well, how glad I am that he has taken the gift.

A letter had come from Robert, which I forgot to speak of when I wrote you before Christmas. No doubt he has told it all to you when he wrote. He is surely indefatigable. He says the second part he is shipping out perhaps had better be a second book, on the Middle Commedies. He has done still another on what he calls the #Dark Comedies", and I daresay there will be more. I only hope it won't prove to be too completely unrealistic; but I shall do what I can with them.

Some fifteen new Hawthorne letters turned up in the collection which I was given the privilege of using; some others I had seen earlier but re-checked this time. None, or few, of the new ones were very important, but I always feel a little like a capitalist when I can add to the census of those I have. The total is well over 1,100 now--quite remarkable actually when one considers how long ago it was.

Your bundle of recents from George, and one from Marianne and one from Rose Odle arrived, which I read with pleasure. And Hoertl's spy book came this morning. If you are subscribing to John Lehman's new magazine out of curiosity, send it along when you have finished with it. I agree with you in finding Spender's very dull, but one has to keep in touch.

Do take care of yourself, dear Fido, and write always.

1 January 1954

Dearest Bryher:

The first letter of the new year must be yours!
And if it brings little news of anything since yesterday's
letter to you, still it does bring love and gratitude and
affection. I cannot help but think that so much which was ill
burst its bounds at the end of last year, that it begins this
new period as something really new, which will have its satisfact-
ions and happiness for you. Actually it seems to me that I have
sensed in your last two letters the beginning of a recovery. What
a fantastic year the last one was: with Hilda's illness and opera-
tions, and then Walter's collapse on top of it. That was last
year; this one will right itself.

We had a pleasant New Year's Eve. At ten-nish we
walked around the corner to the house of a young professor at Yale
who moved in last spring, for an open house--say fifteen people, or
so, who simply talked and laughed and then drank champagne and ate
smoked turkey. You would like him, I think. When he was a little
boy of eight, he made up his mind that he would devote himself to
birds, and has never stopped doing so. His chief recreation as a
child was to go to the aviaries at the Bronx Zoo; at fourteen he
had his own aviary in the Berkshires; was one of the first men to
go into the remoter parts of the Himalyas to trace wild birds, and
has kept going on expeditions which he writes up delightfully. The
last one was called IN QUEST OF THE SPINY WARBLER, and deals with
the East. He has the finest private collection of mounted birds,
and is a curator of ornithology at Yale. Fortunately he has a good
deal of money to support his quests. Next summer he is off to Indo
China again.

I forgot to tell you about the meeting for the poetry
prize on Monday, the of course the result is a secret until the end
of the month when it is publicly announced. We had a pleasant meeting.
John Crowe Ransom could not be there, but my friend Delmore Schwartz,
(a Partisan Review editor) was, and a young poet named Richard Wilbur,
who I expect may be worth helping someday. He and Robert Lowell are
the two best of the really younger generation of poets. Then there
was a kind-of poetess named Katherine Chapin, who is a leader in the
derriere-garde altho friendly enough to the more significant poetry.
We eliminated most of the new books of poems, and as I thought we would
do settled on a vote between Robert Penn Warren's BROTHER TO DRAGONS and
Aiken's COLLECTED POEMS. And, also as I thought it would work out, the
usual response went to the total efforts of a man's lifetime. If not
a distinguished award poetically, it was at least all right sentimentally.
The prize is one given by the National Association of Book Publishers

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

for the best book of poems in the year. It is for $1000, which should help Connie, I presume. It is not so big as that given by the very conservative Poetry Society of America, with money from Mrs Thomas Lamont, but--and I cannot help but feel alas, since it has no reference to the best book of a year, but simply to a poet--the Book Ward was better than theirs. That one, not yet announced, went to someone named Nichols, a woman--quite ordinary. Think of it, the final decision lay between St.John Gigarty!( who ever thought of him as a poet), Christopher LaFarge (no real poet either) and Louise Townsend Nichol. I was quietly consulted at the end, and having thrown up my hands in horror at the alternatives, said I thought the least offensive award would be to Nichols. I think the award is five thousand. Good God! I wish I could have been on it earlier, and helped to steer them. It must go to a citizen, as with all these prizes.

It all makes me much happier to work with you in our own way of helping. We have been infinitely more effective. It is only one of the many evidences of your good judgment and, as we puritans would say, of your good works.

All love, dear Fido, for the New Year. Keep your pecker up, as we used to say on the other side.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

5th January 1954

Dearest Fido:

Your letter of the 29th here yesterday. I am glad you
are off to London as of now, tho I hope my letters to Kenwin will
have been forwarded. It is not easy for you, but I think much better
for you not to stay by Walter's side; whatever innate recovery he makes
must be made from and by himself. Otherwise it would be only to revert
to the complete dependence which was his downfall--or rather the downfall
came from the inner weakness which craved a domineering-dependence. We
can talk about these matters later. I hope you will make a spring trip
this way after Karachi. What a wonderful trip it should be to India.
I am excited of course, vicariously. You must keep a journal, with copies
for Kat and me. Otherwise it will be hopeless. Postcards, of course,
we insist on, and a nice little bronze god to snuggle. It is really
wonderful. How I envy you. A letter came yesterday from the Pup, and
she is agog with pleasure at your plans. I do need to know a great
deal about India, and you will be my Pundit.

Did I ever tell you about the Yale undergraduate luncheon
club, the Pundits, of which I am in charge. It is the oldest at Yale
of the informal honor groups, and was started in the 1880's for under-
graduates who have particular talents, and make good if heterogenous
company. Maybe you'll find a little mascot for us.

But that of course all jokingly. Yet I do have a little
errand for you to do for me in London, that is if you can spare the time.
Could you go for me to, say, The Victoria and Albert, and find if wedding
rings in the time of Shakespeare ever had mottoes in them? I think I
told you that I was going to lecture on *Anthony and Cleopatra*, and I
should love to be able to quote a motto or two from a wedding ring,
especially if they were of the order of "Love is the tie that binds" etc.
Only of course it *must* be authentic; I can't simply make it up. And,
alas, I'm not just sure where to turn in a book, tho I shall try that
too. One doesn't, I suppose, write histories of the wedding ring. Or
does one?

A very busy day today, alas. Students in all morning, and
then after lunch a visit to the dentist*- a few fillings and a replaced
inlay; then a conference over business matters, followed by an interview
with another student, and then it was after six. So I am back at the
office to prepare my lecture for tomorrow morning. I must get at it,
but not until I have sent you my love.

NORMAN

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

9 January 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Just back from luncheon with Marianne Moore and
Wallace Stevens. They were here for the meeting to make the
Bollingen Award in Poetry for this year. They gave it to Auden,
which I think will offend no one. My only disappointment, perhaps,
being still that it doesn't help a young person by calling attention
to his work. However ....

Marianne was in fine form. Yesterday she had been
at a luncheon given by the LADIES' HOME JOURNAL, where she was one
of five women honored. Each was awarded a silver distaff, but instead
of having a spinning wheel to go with it, each distaff was laid in
a small cradle, with a nice silver inscription on it. Marianne was
a little confused as to just what she would use it for, and was most
gay in her narration. She immediately told me the news of her having
learned to drive. I insisted that I would not be happy until I drove
with her. Stevens thought this was going too far in gallantry! But
Marianne insisted that he heart had been set on a soft blue "Moonbeam
Triumph," but she guessed these little foreign cars were quite expensive
and must cost a thousand dollars. It was all good fun. I was delighted
to have the chance to see them. Stevens was equally in fine fettle;
this is the beginning of his 75th year. He says he will go on working
until he is 80, and I think he will.

Last night we went to see the American production of the
new Eliot play; it had opened the night before. And not altogether
successfully, for Ina Claire has, as the director put it, "a congenital
incompacity to commit anything to memory"; she and several others had
to be prompted audibly the first night. Last night was not so bad. But
Eliot's lines are not something one ad libs. I'm not sure what the reaction
in London has been. Here I should not call it enthusiastic. The first
act is tedious and long, mostly a dialogue. To be honest I literally
fell asleep. Perhaps because I was rested from the nap, or perhaps
because the second and third acts were really better, I did like them much
more. But there is neither real wit (whether Wilde, Shaw, or Coward) in
it; nor, for one's solace, do I see any very significant "message" con-
cealed beneath the surface. Well, it was interesting enough to have seen;
and afterwards we went to a party for the cast, and Susan enjoyed talking
to Claude Rains etc.

Hope you and Doris managed to get tickets this time for
Martita's play. What is one to do about her husband? I begin to become
very suspicious of males. I think I will become a female.

Your account of the visit to the Victoria and Albert was
most amusing. I suppose it is almost impossible for a museum man to
believe that anyone else can know anything or be interested in anything
except the banal. But what a pity that so many of the rooms must be
closed.

Do not worry too much about the ms; a letter today from

Pantheon said the Wolves were already away and would be gone for several weeks. Meanwhile nothing of course can be done. It might possibly be that they would prefer postponing to fall; but they did not seem to have been worried. But of course, all you have to do is just ship material Woolford had out here, and I will have typed upon on spot. Am anxious to have all your revisions before you fly out, but just what form they are in doesn't matter.

The news of Hilda was not good. I suspect a good deal of what they say may still be in realm of "theory," but best perhaps not to flout. At any rate I see no reason why Pup should take all children with her this summer, and it is not really so good for them as being in an accustomed place would be. Of course I suppose Kat would like especially to see Nicholas, but I think if anything it might be better for her to come over here. At any rate needn't be decided until your return, when everything will be clearer.

Susan is off next week to New York for some school in flower-arranging and flower-judging, so I shall be my own chief-cook and orchid-tender. It will give me the chance to catch up on some odd jobs anyhow.

All love, and do take care of yourself during the innoculation period. I know what those yellow fever and malaria things can be like. I'd have to be careful to pat Fido in the right places, or I'd get a growl in answer!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

13 January 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Had not meant to wait until another letter arrived
from you, since I feared the agony of those yellow-fever shots would
be too much for your epistolary convenience. I remember feeling as
though I were a horse, when they came at me with a hypodermic needle
that looked like an enema-bag.

But Saturday it rained and froze as it fell, so that
driving was difficult if not impossible. I managed to get to the
entrance to our driveway, by superb--if I say so myself--navigation
to that point. But the turn itself was impossible, so I went on down
the hill into a side street until late at night when the road was sanded.
Sunday was simply disagreeable. Auden arrived at noon for overnight, and
I also had a very german professor from Göttingen for lunch. That night
it began to snow, and by morning we were snowed in. Could not get car
out, to take Auden downtown, nor to get to my 9 o'clock lecture. I finally
made it in the truck of the man who at last came to shovel us out. Susan
had planned to have her garden club at the house Monday afternoon for a
talk on orchid-raising; we had moved furniture, she had arranged flowers,
she had written out her speach. The meeting had to be called off of course,
by a series of telephone calls to those who were to call others, etc. And
by a radio announcement. So she went off earlier than expected, to New
York where she is to be until Friday at a course for judges and in arranging.
Yesterday I woke to solitary splendor of the snow -- it is cold: 5° and a
little above-- to find I needed to shovel again to get to the dentist by
8 for my appointment; that the roof had leaked into the living room, over
rugs, tables, etc. So I fed the bird, watered the flowers, did the early
chores, more or less went without breakfast, and got to the dentist's ten
minutes late, to find no one there and remember that it was next week at
8, instead. And my car was now stuck in the snow! Fortunately a very
nice young man drove by, stopped, took a shovel from his back seat, and
dug me out. Anyhow I was exhausted for the day.

Auden had brought up his choices for the new anthology he is
doing for *aber, wanting to go over them with me*. At least he had made up
lists so there was no starting from scratch. And my missionary instincts
were aroused. He had a poem by Horace in; I persuaded him to put in one by
Marya. Neither will be happy, since others have more; but they will be less
unhappy than otherwise. And I told him to be a man of courage and omit
Oscar Williams, which he promises to do. You remember out discussion of
him. For Hilda he had chosen part of the Claribel sequence in By Avon River,
a good selection and will be fresh for the English market. And I rather
think I persuaded him to include something from the war trilogy; he pretended
to have seen it, but I saw him pull one down from my shelf at home, and

2

he exclaimed "there's some good stuff here!", I presented him with a set of the three. Wystan dearly loves to make discoveries, and tactically I think it would be fine to have Hilda represented to the English on somewhat other lines than simply those of an "Imagist." We made a good many other changes, but they would not particularly interest you. Also went over a new long sequence of poems he has written, which I thought very fine indeed.

I heard a delightful story of Marianne which I thought you would enjoy. I told you she came up Saturday morning for the Bollingen award, and after the meeting, when it was time for lunch, she produced a paper bag with an orange and a sandwich in it. "I didn't think I ought to burden the Bollingen Foundation for my lunch." it's rather sweet, I think, and she maintains the legend admirably. She did go however, and I don't know what happened either to orange or sandwich. Perhaps she took them back to Brooklyn for dinner.

Marianne's brother made her happy by driving down to the New Haven station to meet her train, and driving her to the Library. Then he went home, but of course this made her very very happy.

A little the night before last night, and last night too, I read George's letters to Hilda. They are really delightful. Somewhere in the early letters he mentions my suggestion through you that he should write his memoirs, and he disclaims all ability to do so, as well as all desire. If I were gathering material, he said he would be willing to talk to me. Yet I see quite clearly now what was instinctively felt by me then. No, the important thing was not material, it was his personality I wanted saved. Probably then I thought it should be in the genre of the usual memoir. He was right; memoirs are not for him. But letters are! Letters just like these to Hilda and yourself, brief, entertaining by intent, perceptive by comment, gay and half-formal, and everything--big and little--dead kings and live hedgehogs, daffodils and beautiful ladies, Fat Angus and his sisters, these and so many more seen as only an American could see them, who is not tied down by America but always remains American. Don't tell him -- it would spoil things -- but someday these letters could make him famous: a kind of Mme de Sevigne, or a White of Selborne County. I say this because I hardly saw him except fleetingly at Edith's teas, and perhaps I am confusing even this. Actually I doubt that I ever met him. I certainly do not know him except through his letters, and though perhaps some day I might meet him, he will always be faithful, dear, "old George." I am so grateful for the privilege of having read them.

Do not worry about the manuscript of FABULA. It will work out all right, but certainly you are piling up your load of burdens and worries now; not that you do it out of volition. But when you will start to get your compensation? Poor dear Fido, I do hope things will go easier at last. I only wish I could help more than I do.

A lot love and a pat on the rump,

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taking, spinning the wheel, as George would say, for its success
and your happiness in it. If not the actual art you seek as a
focus, then certainly all Pakistan is spread before you as a midway
point between cultures and as something immensely worth pursuing.
Do not worry too much about letters, since you will not have your
scheibmachine, but keep some sort of journal of which copies can be
made for Hilda and myself when you return. You have such a hound's
eye for detail and atmosphere--a very Fido sense and sensibility--
that it will delight us by its detail as you could never repeat in
letters. A card now and then, a thought of us always, --these are
the main things. For you carry our love with you wherever you go!

Do not burden yourself with treasures for us to bring
back; these will be the memories you can share with us on your
return, and memories are easier to carry by plane than are packages.
If you find some little antique thing--I would trust Kenneth implicitly
on such matters--, and will let Islay take your photograph once or
twice--how rich we will feel.

I have talked to my apprentice-teacher who was in Pakistan
for the State Department last year, and he promises me the name of
a person on two which I will send directly there, if he gives them
too late. He told me that you ought to take with you some of the new
wonder drugs for amebic dysintery. I have just called the doctor
who recommended them for him, but he could not remember them as from
his home, and I will call again tomorrow. Perhaps I will send you
a vial c/o Kenneth just to make sure. He said also that you should,
when you leave the cities in Pakistan be sure to take toilet paper
with you since it is virtually unknown in the hinterlands. Also both
warm and winter clothing. He thinks the snows are pretty deep until
after February, and I hope you will stay a little longer if there is
a possibility then that you can go into the mountains. My Fido will
have to become a St. Bernard!

I shall be anxious to know how Doris makes out; and altho
I am glad that John has seen the light sufficiently to see a specialist,
I should be immensely upset were she to have to seek Trenoweth.
Couldn't she get her daughter and the husband to help with it? She
seems to get along well with them, and another man on the place might be
just what was needed, in addition to Doris's splendid knowledge, to
make things swing. It would be an opportunity for the younger ones, now
and for the future, and there would be no problem of the correct chain
of command, as there must be with John.

Susan was delighted with your letter, and looks forward as
much as I do to the cards from various spots of the globe.

What I judge to be the slimmer of the packages of letters
came from Switzerland, and are safely filed. I was much interested to
read Pat's. It is a curious combination: echoes of Arya, and of
Horace's 'Literary letters,' somewhat mandarin phrasing for one so
young, and altogether I think he is ready for a change of some sort, but
is likely eventually to end up as a teacher-- he has a certain academic
manner as well as what must be a distinct flair.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 H G S
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

25 January 1954

Dearest Bryher:

These are hurried letters, and you will be hurried
when you receive them; still I hope you can scratch off a note
with the nails on your paws. I simply want to get the matter
straight in regards to the chapters on hand, what is coming, and
what you did not change.

I now have on hand, revised copies of chapters I,
III, IV, VI. And your letter of the 20th said that VIII was being
sent today (your "today"), and that II would be sent. I have a
brief chapter VIII (which I suppose is all, and enough), but since
the earlier versions did not have chapter numbers; and I do not
have any chapter VII in revised form, will you tell me where you
wanted it to come?

So: I take it that what would be chapter V, I can
take from the earlier version, since it did not need re-writing or
re-typing. Chapter VII will be made up from the earlier version
as from where your new VI leaves off, and up to the point where you
wish VIII inserted. IX will go on from there, but do I gather you
decided after all not to touch up the final page of the book, or
the other spots we spoke of in the last scenes. Do not let this
worry you, and do not put off your trip, in order to write new
sections. And we could of course always put the publication date
off, since it has never been publicly announced. It is just hell
on you, dear Fido, that I should even have to ask you these questions
at this time. Life has been too unbaliebaly harassed for you during
these past months. How you have stood up under it without cracking
I do not know! It is a tribute to your iron nerves.

Only, I don't want to do something that's wrong, and
that we should continue to regret about the book once it appears.
Much better to wait with the publication, if it is too difficult for
you to remember now.

I am not sure whether I shall be able to find the
dysentery pills in time to reach you, but I found out from the
doctor this morning that a good brand is Vioform, put out by Ciba,
in .25 gram tablets. There are several, of these new ones, all good,
and the thing is they should contain iodine rather than arsenic.
A good American pharmacy in Rome should have them. One takes a
pill a day for ten days, when one feels the beginnings; then ten
days off, and then another series.

What a horrible way of expressing affection for you,
--the questions above, and the advice for dysentery. Much better
simply to send you my love.

2

whom director of the American Academy at Rome, who is a friend of mine, and
then we will pass on to expertisers of later periods of sculpture. Offhand, and
before he could see it, another friend thought it unlikely that it was any period
of Roman, since they never did free animals, and probably was renaissance or
baroque. But there is no doubt but that Douglas is really fond of it, and it
was something he had fought a little for with his brother, Robin. Tell Kenneth
that I may have to go higher than 200 dollars for it in all likelihood, and only
wish he were available so that I could consult by cable. I'm glad you corrected
the figure in your last letter from Rome: you had simply said 200 in your first
letter, and being a good anglophile I thought you were referring to pounds.

I rather liked Archibald D. -- an ineffectual and rather frightened
person, I thought, but he seemed to be reasonably devoted to his arthritic wife,
and to the children; and when he spoke to them by phone from my office he was
very appealing. His wife's mother has just died from cancer, so they want to
go to Arizona for the sake of her arthritis, and are thus trying to sell off the
books and such things as the bronze head and the little statue (which I did not
see). If Kenneth has strong feelings about a top price for the turtle, he'd
better cable me collect after this letter reaches you. I look forward to seeing
his manuscript when it arrives.

And tell Mr Lyons that I exist on a good photograph of you; I really
do need it sometime for the books.

... At that precise moment I went downstairs for the afternoon mail
and found your second letter, which will delight Susan tonight as much as it has
me. How I envy you! You must find another rare spot where you and I can go in
my season.

I am off in a few moments to hear Kokeritz talk on Shakespeare's
language. He is atwitter with excitement at it all. The audience for the first
lecture last week, on "Shakespeare's Audience" was so large they have moved to
a bigger hall. K is frightened he won't sway the masses, and I daresay he won't,
though he will certainly be interesting to many of them. I am the one who is
frightened, but I also have a radio talk to do on Shakespeare first, so perhaps
that will help.

Did I write you about Our Tom's play, and that, alas, I went to sleep
during the first act. Now it is revealed to us, semi-officially, that Act I is
the Father; Act II, the Son; and Act III, the Holy Ghost? I wouldn't have
guessed it all by myself, and am embarrassed to have fallen asleep on the Big
Papa; but anyway I was wide awake for the Holy Ghost!

Have just written a tribute to Wallace Stevens, for his 75th birthday,
to be published in the spring, altho his birthday doesn't come until next fall.
We are planning an exhibition in his honor then, and a bibliography of his work
to go with it, but fortunately I won't have to do that myself.

... Another little break then, after which I went to hear Kokeritz.
Very good, although I think "language"s is better read about than listened to.

Doubtless this will all seem most odd and remote if indeed it ever
reaches you. But to be without letters to Fido is almost as heart-rending as
to be without letters from her, so imagine that I croon a *Marachi* love song to
you, to warm your heart beneath your double-lined woollies. And my greetings of
course to Kenneth and Islay (if they will forgive the familiarity).

Salaam aleikum, and all love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

13 February 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Your letter of the 5th in this morning, and on the whole I
call it very good time indeed. How glad I am that you have your little
typewriter so that we can have these notes. I save, of course; and will
send to you when you get back.

Last group of letters, surface, in from Lowndes day before
yesterday. I was especially pleased to see the pictures of Hodgson. Somehow
not quite what I thought he would like like, but that may be simply because
bull terriers are not Fidos for me.

Thursday night, at the Fellows' dinner, I spoke on the wing
with the Master of the College--former director of the Academy at Rome,-- about
the turtle. Or did I write you this? Anyhow he says pish and toddle to opinion
given me before by one of the history of art people (actually his field is
Spanish and Peruvian, but he talked as though he knew, and I am ignorant!) that
Romans did not do free animals. Dogs, horses, elephants, etc, and Richter the
Greek-vase woman has done a book on them! But no one has done a book on Roman
turtles. Perhaps that should be a collaboration between us. He is a little
puzzled for the moment at dating, but has determined the stone, which is not
verd antique, but another marble used only by Romans. The it is possible of
course that this _might_ have been carved from an old column. I shall certainly
be able at this rate to stall off purchase until K returns to Rome, which will
make matters more satisfactory. But could you get from K for me as much as he
knows of the actual history of the turtle, from where he got it or dug it up,
and the like. It would or might help these people, and I hate to ask Douglas,
since my story is that I developed a little passion for this thing having
heard Uncle Norman talk about it in London during the war. So far as Archibald
Douglas is concerned, I do not know K., and of course in a sense that is true,
having met him only once. Archibald D. also told me that K advised him not to
have the turtle experted in Italy, lest it be held as a national treasure.

The Shakespeare festival proppers. There were six or seven
hundred people to hear Kokeritz talk on Shakespeare's language, and Kokeritz
has been written up in the New Yorker (which fills his Scandinavian heart with
southern joy) as well as having an editorial written about him in the N.Y.
Tribune. Prouty is equally is sveneth heaven: he told me with pride that the
Ambassador to the U.S. from Pakistan is coming from Washington on Monday to
see the production of the Merry Wives of Windsor produced in Koketitz's
pronunciation! I leave the reasons to your combined imaginations. You are _in_
Pakistan and will no doubt understand the local appeal; I do not, tho of
course _I_ am interested to hear it.

Robert Wheeler, one of our instructors in American Studies, who
was in Pakistan last year, lecturing around on America, for the State Department
has given me the following names of people who might be useful to you if you have
time for them: Mr Shepherd Jones (American) who is Public Affairs Officer with
our govt at Karachi; William Withus (also American) who is similarly Public

2

Affairs Officer at Lahore; and S.M. Sharif (Pakistani) who is past Educational Advisor to the Pakistani Minister of Education, at Karachi, and who can be reached thru the Ministry of Education, and is especially good on local cultures, and always delighted to help anyone who is interested. Simply mention Wheeler's name.

I am beginning to be a little worried about not being able to start work on the Anthony and Cleopatra lecture. Thank you for your efforts on Elizabethan wedding rings and their posies. I have found a few articles on them, which will do the job nicely.

By the way, if K or I should see a nice vase suitable for one of Susan's arrangements, and perhaps a piece of old cloth to hang as backdrop, do have it shipped to me, surface; I will pay duty etc when it arrives, and settle with you for the cost. She is always mad about the exotic in these matters.

Much love, always. I like to think of my Fido scampering around temples on her paws.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

23 February 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Welcome back, tho I almost wish I could think you still in
Pakistan. However, one needs these first "grand tours" in order to view
the land; then one returns for the longer stay and a different perspective.
Your letters have been wonderful: a kind of glamorous ray into the New England
winter; do have copies made of your fresh notations when you return, so that
Hilda and I can see them.

I rather dash this off, on a schoolday morning when I am supposed
to be holding office hours, in order to be sure to catch you while you are still
with the boys. One or two things for you to send flightwise back to me, if you
can; the rest will wait. I will probably send next letter to Kusnacht, and
afterwards to Kenwin, unless I hear to the contrary.

Firstly: the turtle is on the table in my office. My friend, who
was director of the American Academy at Rome wrote me the following expersise of
it:

"The marble turtle, which you so kindly let me examine, is carved from cippolling, 'marmor carystium' from Carystos on the Island of Euboea. This was a favorite decorative marble of the Roman Empire not much used before, or since.

"The turtle was designed or adapted for use in a fountain. It has a slot for a pipe-fitting in the bottom and a hole bored through the throat to issue at the mouth. That it was so used is perhaps shown by the condition of the top surface, which is weathered and pitted and seems to show signs of a lime deposit. However, the other surfaces though smooth are but little worn, and the visible parts of the turtle were at some later time waxed and polished.

"The subject is blocked out in large simplified masses and details are grooved in a highly schematized manner in the surface. All in all, it looks like a fairly competent piece of garden sculpture.

"The lack of comparable pieces and the summary execution forbid one's judging its style as ancient or anything else. It might conceivably be Roman, but it might equally well be late renaissance or modern. Its value, I should think, is largely sentimental. It is a fairly undistinguished piece of decorative sculpture, and might, I suppose, fetch a hundred dollars on a favorable market."

Now I have not reported this to Archibald Douglas, because I wanted if possible to wait until K's return. Douglas of course will be vastly upset, particularly because he says that K advised him not to have it expertly in Italy because it would very likely be called a national treasure, and its exportation be forbidden. If he objects to Brown's expertise, I suppose I might persuade Miss Richter at the Metropolitan to look at it, using Francis Taylor, the director, as go-between. Naturally however I'd prefer to start negotiating with him. I can't offer him $100, because he genuinely likes it and would prefer to keep it; also it was in fact Norman Douglas's, and therefore does have an additional value. How much? That depends on K. I'll have to have a top limit from you or him, and I can't really haggle for it as tho' it were a shawl in Pakistan. $250? $200? $300? You see I can't even guarantee to get it then, for he may feel he prefers to hang on to it. So

2

will you report this to K and then send me airmail the top limit to which I should be able to go.

Tell him also that his manuscript has come safely, and that I am looking forward to reading it. I won't be able to for another ten days, until I write this *Anthony and Cleopatra* lecture, but will soon afterwards.

Because it was a little difficult for me to absolutely sure of my scholarship about the Latin names in the novel, I finally hired a young graduate school scholar to make the glossary for me, since the Wolffs did not receive the list you said you sent to them. He has finished, and I am sending it off tonight. There were only two he could not locate: Poiana (is it Poiana vallis, the modern canton Wallis?) and Plecas (is it Pleck in Bavaria?). Stupidly I cannot immediately lay my hands on the letter in which you told me the book in which you had found most of the names. If offhand you can send me the information on these two names, do so; or the name of the book. But it doesn't matter terrifically, for we will hedge on the description of the glossary.

The Yale festival has been floutshing. The Ambassador from Pakistan (to the United Nations) turned out to be a professor of English at the University of Lahore, who has translated all of Shakespeare into Urdu. He is Ahmed Bokhari, a very nice person whom I met briefly. He says the Pakistani can't stand unhappy endings, and that Pakistan is probably the only place today where at the end of HAMLET, Hamlet marries Ophelia.

You would have been delighted at the performance of part of THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, in Kokeritz's Shakespearean pronunciation, on the Omnibus program over television. This is the Ford Foundation sponsored program for improving TV. The play was preceded by shots of Prouty and Kokeritz, and much talking about what scholars were doing. Then they examined the first folio, your first folio, and there was a prolonged closeup of the television set. So you can say that this folio is the only one ever to be looked at simultaneously by 17,000,000 people. That is what they reckon their audience to be. It is rather fabulous. Probably so many people have ever, altogether, looked at a folio before.

I enclose a clipping of a locally owned ms, which I thought might amuse you. This and most of his others come from the Phillips collection, which I told you about some time ago. Quite fabulous things, in fact.

Hilda writes happily, tho I think she is worried about "alter, as I am. Now that you are back I must be quite firm with my Fido, and ask her to heel to my advice. Dear Fido, you too must be firm. Walter must not return to Kenwin. This is one of those things which unhappily are over with. He will not save himself and he cannot ruin you. Too much depends on you, quite apart from your personal happiness; and you have duties and responsibilities which you must continue and have strength to continue on far wider spheres than his. Set him up someplace with an allowance, enough if you want to take care of a companion. What happens then is up to him and his own strength of character. It is his chance; were he to go back to Kenwin, it would surely ruin him and the houshold and yourself. It is a matter of mathematics. I think you have a horrible moment ahead of you, but you have the strength to face up to it: that is the necessity of telling Walter this yourself. It can come only from you, since he is too weak to have it come from himself. Neither Brunner nor Hilda can tell him. Only remember that my hand will be holding yours, and that I would take you in my arms afterwards while you weep. But there is no choice, and you are your father's daughter.

All love you, a father.

Noman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

14 March 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I have not written you for over a fortnight, longer
in silence than I should have liked. And here it is, almost ten
o'clock of a Sunday night, and it will be quite impossible for me
to do much more than the start of a letter to you. I have just
finished making out my income tax, always a SOUR exercise with me,
especially this time when I forgot to carry over some figures and
only discovered it when I was transferring the tables to the final
sheets. The result is dramatic enough anyway without miscalculating.
Did they have income taxes in Pakistan. If not I suspect that is
the place for me.

Just now I will not go into any details about the
difficulties with Walter; you know how I feel, and how strongly
I feel that you cannot be imprisoned and must not have your heels
clipped, willy-nilly. I am only sorry you did not let Walter go back
to Elitta or Glover since they offered. This is a mistake; you
cannot both continue to possess him and be rid of his burden at the
same time. And when you say that you have spent so much that it must
not be wasted or the effect spoiled by his going to them, you should
instead have said that you had him put back into such trim that he
could stand or fall on his own with them. I wish you would do it
still. Hilda knows how I feel; I gather perhaps she does not agree
with me, and I have had no answer to my last one or two letters from
her. If you feel you must keep a lien on him, put him in a nearby
flat with a nurse; you will only shudder and life will be intolerable
for both if you pretend you are back on the old footing. But perhaps
all this had better wait until you get back to the States in May; then
we can really discuss matters, quietly and thoroughly. The Wolves
expect you and so do I.

I finished the Antony and Cleopatra lecture last Wednesday,
and seldom have I sweated so hard over a thing as I did over this. I
only wish the results were commensurate with the effort that went into
it. Anyhow I was exhausted when it was done, and my desk has piled high
meanwhile. I enclose a copy of the lecture because I thought you and
Hilda might be amused to see it. Give it to her when you have finished
with it. It was really written for both of you. We have our three-
cornered Elizabethan hat: you and Hilda and I.

The radio talk on Shakespeare went off reasonably well
the Sunday night before, and I will send you a copy of it in my next.
But you should have the occasion of my silence first.

Wednesday I gave the lecture; there were some 700 there
to here it. And Thursday and Friday I kept my nose close to the galleys
of FABULA, which is now in the Wolves hands, and, I hope, sped on its
way. I always feel I myself must read the galleys, and I always do find

a few things which the others have overlooked.

I have not had a chance to write Archibald Douglas yet, tho
I had a letter from His wife--he has been in the hospital--asking what
I had learned. I will write him tomorrow if I can.

But this coming week will be a busy one for me. Tomorrow I
have my lecture in the morning, my graduate seminar in the afternoon,
then a two hour committee meeting of the board of the International
Students House; then drive immediately to Hartford with Susan and another
couple to see the Flower Show there, and her exhibit in it. Tuesday
I have to lead the college chapel service at noon--my annual appearance
as preacher; and at night speak for an hour on a local television show.
Wednesday, after my class, I have to go to Rutgers, N.J. to speak to
Rutgers University there that night, and hope to stop off on the way
to go over final plans for your book with the Wolves. That night I
come back to New York for the night, and the next day have to spend
on a final going-over of Wm Rose Benet's papers and books, and run back
to New Haven in order to go to Hartford again that night for another
visit to the flower and show and to pick up Susan's exhibit for that
day. Friday I think there is nothing but a test to give and a party to
go to that afternoon, and Susan wants to go to a dance that night.
Saturday we are having her sister and brother-in-law for the weekend.

It will not, as you see, be an idle week. But nevertheless I
shall be sending love to you and Hilda, as I do now.

Norton

15 March 1954

Dearest Bryher:

This is the merest note, but I want to be sure to
get it off to you instanter, since there is a matter on which I
want your approval to proceed with.

I told the Wolves that I had the excellent snapshot
of you which Islay took, and sent it on for them to see. Now they
would like to take an enlargement of your head to send but with the
review copies of your book. I know this may go a little against
your grain, but I hope you will say yes. People do like to see the
photos, and we have established your name so that this is not a help
to it but simply the granting of a gratification for your public.
And since you will not be wandering the streets en route to cocktail
parties, it will not interfere with your freedom of movement. I'll
give Islay a by-line, and if you like we can pay him the usual fee
for the use of such a picture. I'd write him myself, or have you do
so, but everything is being rushed. So I wish you would cable me
your Ok, or your disapproval if, alas, that should be your decision.

All love, dear Fido -- you are a "prize Fido" you know.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

21 March 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Your cable came this morning, and I am glad that you are willing to let us use the picture. I shall write the *Wolves* tomorrow, and we will await the arrival of the new one. Thank you. It was good to know that you must have received my longer letter as well. This is a Sunday afternoon at the office, with so much to be done that I shall simply try to clean up a little with old questions or matters I have let slide with you, rather than something aus dem herz -- so it is always that of course. So don't expect any order or logical coherence to this letter.

I have had the second letter of evaluation about Kenneth's
turtle, and have written to Douglas at last. I shall let you know what
he says. The second expert said it was very hard to pin down the date
of the object, though it was obviously from Italian marble and cut by an
Italian. He thinks Renaissance or Baroque, and set the value as from
between 100 and 200 dollars. In thinking it over I decided to offer
Douglas 250, to make it seem generous above the estimates. To that I
shall stick and hope he will come around. I am thinking of course of
his original belief, which Kenneth seems inadvertently to have abetted,
that it was too priceless to be expertised in Italy lest it be thought
a national treasure. There is money enough in the savings account, and
I can simply give it to Kenneth from the account if Douglas agrees. How
I will get it to Italy is another matter.

Dr. Hatcher, the Chicago orthopedist, sent me a copy of
his letter to Miss Scarlett, and I enclose a copy of it and of his to me.
I doubt if your suggestion about the radium is correct, since this would
have been recognized by Hatcher from the plates. He is at the top in
such matters. Perhaps you should check as to whether hydrocortone is
available in England, and if not perhaps I could send her some. Will you
let me know about this?

A notice came that the subscription to LES LETTRES NOUVELLES had expired. Did you renew it in my name, or should I directly. I find it most interesting, and my chief link with the Paris scene now.

I enclose also a copy of Jean Starr's letter to the *Wolves*,
or rather Mme Wolf. Oh dear, oh dear! We are trying to stall off sending
the review copies in the hope that I can get others to review FABULA instead
of her. She means so well, and does so poorly. One prays to God to spare
one from one's friends. She won't help the book at all, but the contrary;
yet she may win our and we will all have to pretend to be grateful. Why
couldn't she have written for the chance to review the book in the *Péonia
Star*? But all this of course only for your information. The *Wolves* are
sick at heart.

2

The package of early letters from George has arrived safely, though the customs people were kind and fixed up some extra wrapping for the envelope originally sent. These seem often to rip and are apparently not very strong. When you get your next batch better get a stronger version. The envelope of letters from Pakistan also arrived safely, and have been put in their proper files. I should think best to be quite wholesale in sending out the things from Kenwin, mss and the rest. They can always be returned to you, and it makes the problem there much simpler. Do not bother to read through them; I can sort them out here.

I liked your proposed introduction to the book of photographs, but will wait until I have the photographs themselves from Islay before I discuss with the Wolves or elsewhere. I need to feel the effect of the pictures before I can say what should accompany them, either as introduction or running commentary. When you can get to your journal on Pakistan this may revive all sorts of particular and useful memories.

By the way, I have heard excellent reports of a book called PERSIAN ADVENTURE, by one Anne Sinclair Mehdevi, published here and then in England. Would you like to see what manner she adopts? Not to copy of course, but to study or improve on. Or we can wait until you come to the States. We all expect you.

The thousand for the fund arrived and has been deposited. Am glad you sent to Gegrory and a final gift to Pat. Horace is to give a creative writing seminar in poetry this summer at the New School for Social Research, and this will give him a little extra money too, without too much work I imagine. He does this sort of thing excellently, and likes to be and keep in touch with younger writers. He is a great help to them. I saw Marjorie Benet (Bill Benet's widow) on Thursday; she had just seen them, and said that Marya was particularly well and seemed happy.

I suppose you got the news from Leslie about his appointment as the first of the Research Fellows at King's. It will last from four to six years, and only requires one term a year in Cambridge. This will buck him up tremendously, not only because of the funds it will give but especially because of the honor. This is a true honor for an American, especially, to have. Yale will keep on his title of research fellow so that he can return to it in the end. Might it not be a good move for me to inquire, discreetly, from my brother-in-law, who is also a fellow of King's, just how much money this gives Leslie? It would probably be sensible to diminish the annual grant to him during this new tenure, except for a little gift now and then. For as we said, or rather you said, there is the problem of a permanent sinecure. However, as you know, no matter what happens in the long term future we will always be in a position to help him if needed, one way or another. This is a good example of what I meant by saying it would be better for me to take care of this rather than a series of separate funds in case anything happens to you.

You spoke of going to Paris to see the Gandharu stuff in the Musee Guimet, and I hope you can, as well as look up whatever may be in England too. We can check the American side when you come. This has importance in terms of slanting the introduction to the book of photographs, and the kind of information to give. A trip to Paris is long overdue on your part,

3

and it would give you a chance to see Adrienne again and Sylvia. Also
to check up on the translation of Hilda's book and your own. Can't you
manage either on your way to London or on your return? That is unless
you come straight from London to here.

When you do get to London why not put a
trek to look at whatever new boxes have been opened of the Phillips mss.
It can be done I know, since Osborne has managed to get things from them:
very exciting things, too, as that clipping I sent you shows. I also
noticed that Bertram Rota had some inexpensive presentation copies of
Dorothy Richardson. I think we should be sure that there is a good collect-
ion of her published work to go with the letters. But perhaps this is not
really the moment for anything of this sort. There seem to be too many
much more vital problems in life itself to be settled.

And these certainly will not be easily settled, nor without a
good deal of pain on every side. As I wrote you, I am a little sorry
that Walter is not to come to Melitta or to go to Glover. I am really
troubled at the idea of your settling in again with him, and must insist
that he have some sort of companion if he is not to stay at the sanitarium.
It is nice of him to make you the radio, and you must of course express as
well as have gratitude for it. It is also important that he should have
or find something to do. This lies really at the root of a good deal of
his difficulty, as I have often said to you. But this making of a radio
does not really solve the problem of your relationship to him, nor can he
again have the feeling of a sort of blackmail in keeping you close and unable
to move. You could not have stood it so long and as bravely as you have
done, had you not had a courage of steel and the strength of ten. But you
cannot always draw on this reserve or you yourself will ultimately collapse.

As to Hilda, I judge from what you say and what she writes that
Walter has been a tremendous drain on her emotional strength, which she has
little enough of anyway. The attempts at suicide, the probable confidences
which she had to share, the sense of responsibility to you beyond what was
probably actually necessary, have set her back. Yet innately she is still
all right, and if she can have a little quiet and time to herself that will
count for most. Yet, as you say, and they say, she needs to be made to eat
and sleep and helped to relax. It is a problem for which I have no solution
yet. So far as going over her papers is concerned, perhaps if I came over
for a week this summer, she and I could go to Kenwin and go through them
together, since she does not like the thought of doing it alone, and I dare-
say you are not quite up to it at this moment, and have more than enough of
your own to take care of.

The only thing that seems settled is that you ought to give up
Kenwin at least for now, clear out the things, and if you can't do it
properly, or it doesn't seem wise, then rent it. A smaller place would be
much better in any circumstance, and would not have the memories to haunt
one.

I enclose a copy of the little Shakespeare radio broadcast I
made. They wanted me to speak on Shakespeare, because of the festival,
and the Bacon angle seemed to me to be one way in which I could end up
with the usual sort of praise by means of an unusual route. I simply thought
it might amuse you.

4

The ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA paper you will have read, for better or worse, by the time this reaches you. I wish it could have been better. Did I tell you that they were bringing out the lectures in a little offset-process book which is supposed to appear in May. I rewrote the opening paragraph, and took out a personal remark or two en route, and simply let it go. But as I told you, it was written for you and Hilda, especially for you. The Selden quote came from one of the books in the collection, and I did my re-reading in the second folio, since the others were on exhibition in the Library.

I think I told you a little of what has filled my time since then. I got the proofs off for your book, and saw Mrs W. in New York on Wednesday for lunch. (St. Patrick's Day, and when I ordered a martini for lunch they brought me a green one!) She said you had liked the glossary I had made here, and she had incorporated the suggestions you sent. I'm glad you could do this. I thought a good deal of the information quite interesting.

Then income tax returns, which is always a devastating experience, and on Monday my lecture and seminar and meetings, and on Monday night to Hartford to see the flower show where Susan exhibited. She had a nice arrangement, but did not place. Tuesday office hours all morning, until I had to dash to give my annual chapel talk at the noonday services. It took an angel over my shoulder to get me through. In the afternoon more meetings and then at night an hour's solo lecture over the Yale television station. They call it the "best lectures series," and I was supposed to repeat one I had already given. But I had to keep making it up out of my head to fill the hour, which is a long time to talk without stopping or having an audience to play to. Learned however that one musn't wear a white shirt, for the same of reflection, and when they finished putting pancake grease on my face, ears etc I looked as though I had stepped off the plane from the Bahamas. A little man kept poking the camera in my face, pearing through it, and then clapping his hand to his head in horror. This was most disconcerting to my talk, since I kept wondering whether I looked that bad, or whether nothing was going out at all. However I got through it.

Wednesday morning after my lecture I hopped on a train in time for a late business lunch with Mrs Wolf, and then on the train again to New Jersey and Rutgers University where I lectured that night on American Culture or rather, I gave a conversazione with another man on the subject, which made it easier. There was a party and supper beforehand for me, and another party afterwards, so it was 12:30 when I got back to New York and was glad to tumble into bed. Thursday morning I went down early to Mrs Benet's and made a final going over of Bill's books and papers, so that she could sell the rest and pick up the apartment. Most exhausting! I ran for the five oclock train to New Haven, had supper here, and then went again to Hartford for Susan's second showing. She got a second place this time, very creditably, and I think deserved the blue ribbon actually.

Friday was comparatively easy, and altho we had been supposed to go to a dance that evening both Susan and I were too tired, so she went to bed early and I went to see a movie based on the novel *FROM HERE TO ETERNITY* since I must lecture on the novel later in the spring, and wanted to see what the students would know if they saw only the film.

5

Meanwhile I have been reading drafts of doctoral dissertations like
mad, so the students could go on with their re-workings of the material,
and managed to finish the last on hand yesterday afternoon. Last night
Susan's sister and brother-in-law came down for the night from Hartford,
and we went to see a musical GUYS AND DOLLS which was here. But they made
a real visit, and stayed up until almost three this morning, having to get
up at eight, so I shall be a little tired by tonight when I make my speach
to a Yale club of undergraduates.

Susan has been very anxious that I should take her on a little
vacation, so this Friday we are driving to Virginia, and will try to see
some of the gardens and 18th-century houses and the like, being gone until
the 3rd. The change will probably be good for me too, although it will
be a little tight on the pocketbook. However it should be worth it. There
are really only seven days of vacation, and this was too short for me to
come over, and I judged the time not quite convenient for you either. Any-
how we will be seeing each other soon, as it is. How I do look forward
to that! And how much love I send you always, dearest Fido, my tail wagging
and my nose sniffing and wrinkling.

Zcoran

Mrs. Jean Starr Untermeyer

235 East 73rd Street
New York 21, N. Y.

March 7th, 1954

Dear Friend,

I would like you to know that the review of Bryher's "The Player's Boy" last week in The Saturday Review over my name was horribly mutilated by Mr. Walters, so-called review editor.

Last May I sent him a review in the form of a Socratic Dialogue, a means I chose in order to quote more liberally than I otherwise could have done. At the time I called his attention to the form, but said I hoped he would like it, though it was an unusual one for a review. I have his card of acceptance.

When the review was still unprinted in August I wrote to him but received no reply. In October I wrote to Amy Loveman who promised to see about it. I also spoke to her personally and she explained that so many books that were ephemerall had to be reviewed at once or not at all, and that Bryher's book was not of that kind. In January, when I learned that Bryher would have a new book out in the spring, I called up Mr. Walters who said Amy Loveman didn't like the form. She denied this and the buck was passed again. Then Mr. Walters wrote me and asked me to rewrite the review, and I consented on the understanding he would print it at once. Again he delayed, and when, finally, the piece appeared, the title was changed and more than a page and a half of the review cut, and so badly that the continuity was lost. It seems like a piece of calculated malice, since he inserted a wood-cut where he deleted my material. Why he behaves so I do not know. I have never met the man, and though he caused me much vexation, I have been unfailingly courteous to him.

Mr. Walters calls himself a historian. Raleigh was executed in 1618 and Shakespeare died in 1616. So the title, When Shakespeare Was Old, which he substituted for my title, History and Poetry, is slightly ridiculous. But you know how helpless a reviewer is. I thought of taking the matter to Norman Cousins, but I think he is more concerned with Indian economics at the moment than with American literature.

Perhaps most of the S.R. readers are not hypercritical, and the mutilated review, though unpleasant for me, may prepare fresh interest for her forthcoming book. When you have galleys, will you send me a set. I have written Mr. Brown of N.Y. Times asking for the book, but he has not promised it to me. We will see. I am glad to learn from your husband that you both had such a refreshing trip in Europe.

With best greetings,

Jean Starr Untermeyer

25 March 1954

Dear Bryher:

It rains, but we are off tomorrow. If any dire emergency arises I can be reached at the Williamsburg Lodge, Williamsburg, Virginia, from Sunday night until Friday. I am driving back then and will be in New Haven on Sunday. I daresay no need for this, but one never knows.

Your letter of the 24th in this afternoon, and I was of
course happy that you like the Antony and Cleopatra lecture. As I said
it was for you. Probably my only one in that field, although it is
fun to be able to spread my wings once in a while. It should be printed
in May. I shall see that you get a copy.

But what pleased me most was that Walter seems to be taken
care of for the moment. The important thing of course is that he should
get back on his feet. One can only perhaps see then. And I think that
if this can be held in abeyance perhaps Hilda will pick up; the strain
has been large on her.

I have left directions to have the photographs forwarded
on to New York when they arrive. I presume that you must have sent
surface, or perhaps they went directly by air to New York. You did not
say. Knowing that the Wolves would be anxious I wrote them to let me
know if it got there and promised to see it was sent from here.

Had not realized that Elsie had been in Paris. Do tell me
all details of her escapade with Sylvia when you hear. It sounds
ravishing.

A lecture yesterday by a Francis Ferguson (wrote an excellent
book called THE DDEA OF A THEATRE) on James' Golden Bowl, which he called
a fable of America's role in the world. Very Swedenborgian in its inter-
pretation, but I was rather tired, and after introducing him to the audience
I fell back into contemplation of my own thoughts.

I understand Edith is in New York; was asked by Lincoln Kir-
stein to a supper for them last Thursday but simply could not go. A friend
did and conveyed my greetings. Edith spent the evening mostly talking
about the gall of Babette Deutsch in asking her for a blurb to the book.
I did not gather much, second-hand, about Hollywood. Perhaps you have
heard.

All love as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

25 April 1954

Deares t Bryher:

The past fortnight, really three weeks now, has been
an almost total eclipse. Basically this has been caused by nothing more
profound or solemn than course-scheduling for next years majors in
American Studies, but whatever else has come on top of this in the way
of end-of-the-year events has simply crushed out all life and truth.
But it will not be long before you are here, and we can spread jam on
our reunion. Details can wait.

But not my thanks for your birthday wishes, the check
which was like a foolproof lifebuoy, and your telegram with greetings
from you and Hilda, and, as the wire rea d, "LOVE FROM BOOH." It made
Easter and Birthday somehow combine with Halloween. But I do not scare
easily, and only wave a kiss in return.

Really the scheduling is a g�eling experience, but one
must take it seriously. For this year's second-year men it means the
next two years of their life, and they can't help but think it's important
to decide things slowly and with due consideration. Nor can I say that is
wrong to do, even when I see lines of men waiting outside the door, and
know that my food is growing cold, and my nerves are sprouting fringes
at the edge. My birthday was spent making out schedules. Your wire came
like cooling spirit.

Easter Sunday I went to Gardner to see my mother, whose
81st birthday fell on the same day. I think I wrote you -- or perhaps
it was at the end of your Pakistan ausflug--that she had fallen and broken
her elbow. I could not go up then, and there was not much point to it
anyhow; but this was something for me not to miss. Susan and the girls
did not go, since little Susan had to go back to New York that afternoon.
A nice day, and I told my beads as I went through the countryside.

All seems to be in order with FABULA. The Wolves sent me
samples of the jackets, but I have not actually seen the book as yet. The
jackets are splendid. Mrs W. agreed with me that green was not the right
color, and I feel sure you will like the Roman red they have chosen -- a
kind of brick red and very effective. I have told them to save your copies
until you come, so that you can sign any you wish, and put the FABULA
jackets on particular ones. Islay's photographs were superb; I was glad
of the excuse to have them, and made them return all save the one they
used. I will cherish these towards a rainy day.

And I have been having fun making preliminary skirmishes
with the Gandara photographs. I have spoken to the Wolves about it, for
I want to know a little more first. A few nights ago I showed them to
my ornithologist friend, a new neighbor, who I have known them for some
years. He was delighted. I knew the museums where most came from, and
could identify the periods immediately. He is a Gandara fan, and did

3

I am worried about the news of your cheek. Do you think it would be a good idea, just for safety sake, to have it looked at while you are in the States. These comparative opinions are always valuable; and if you signal me I can scout out the best people for this sort of thing. Probably would require no more than an hour of one day, and then one would know.

No news from young Douglas about my offer for the turtle,
and I have not wanted to write, knowing that he was in hospital. Also
because if he is sounding out other possibilities which are not likely
to succeed, he is all the more apt to accept. However will write in a
fortnight, so that if there is anything to discuss we can do so while
you are over. Will try to plan so as not to have his reply until you
are actually here.

Susan has had her local flower show, and did very well:
three blue ribbons, and three red ones. Now she is at work on her garden
in town, and today we paid our first visit to the shore and she put in
two new rose bushes. We will probably not move there for another six
weeks.

Forgive me, dear Fido, for not having written. I know you
understand. One feels pretty much over the hump now. Only three more
weeks of actual classes, and then I can clear up things and get back to
Hawthorne. I hope to make a further dent this summer. Perhaps the end
will be in sight then.

All love, and a pat on the tail.

1 May 1954

Dearest Fido:

Oh, these times of the year! It is a glorious May
lay outside. The students are having houseparties, and there is
a crew race on the river. But I have been at work in my office at
my chores, except for a period this morning when I went to the
ordination of a former student of mine into the Episcopal priest-
hood. My how long it seems to take to get through it. I was there
for two hours, which is much too long to spend in the midst of a
ritual which is not particularly congenial to me, and which I do
not really understand. I would honestly have preferred to stay at
my desk. There are examinations to correct and to make-out to give;
dissertations to read; and even to read a book or two to lecture on.
I want as much out of the way as I can before you come.

I can look forward to nothing else. And try to make my
plans accordingly. I shall try to reach you by phone at the Towers
on the 9th. The next day is the next to my last day of classes (that
comes on Wednesday), so I shall not try to see you on Monday. We
can make plans when you come. The Wolves will obviously have things
they want you to do, as will Pup. I hope we can take at least a trip
to Boston, and perhaps circle back by way of Concord and Gardner,
so that we can stop in briefly on my parents. In Boston I want you
to see the man who is generally thought to be the chief authority
here on Ghandara art, and I will have checked to see how much they
have of it at the Fogg and at the Boston Museum. We might see Merrill
too.

I have not troubled you about a list for FABULA, but you
might work at your list on your way over, and decide which you want
simply to be sent, and which you wish to inscribe. I asked the Wolves
just to send one to Pup, to Gregory, and to Marianne, so that they
could have read it before you arrive. I do not know how the Times
deal with Jean Starr worked out.

I was delighted that you were working on *Manchester*. I
am not sure that something couldn't be done with it, but need to look
at it again. I remember it vividly all the same, which is a great
deal for me. I sent the N.D. to *Harper's*, but alas they have just
returned it this week. The *Atlantic* editor told me he had already
bought one, when I asked him in conversation some months ago. Harper's
have had it since. I shall try another angle.

Don't worry about what you bring over. It will be enough
just to see your tail wag, and to hear all the barks and woofs again.
If Hilda has uncovered anything she wants to send, as of the beginning

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

9 June 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I have waited until the meeting yesterday with Wolff and Ingholt. It went off very well indeed. You would have been pleased. Wolff and I talked together a little before Ingholt came in, and I was delighted that our ideas for the book absolutely coincided, since I already knew what Ingholt thought. We agreed that the area of material should be that of Pakistan, with the intention of giving it a thoroughness of data which would make it permanently valuable as a reference book. That any book which tried to include examples in American collections, BM, Guimet, etc., would be a much different project and probably less all-around useful. We figure we can go as high as 104 plates, many of which would contain two to four illustrations; only the most important pieces to be full-page in size. When Ingholt came we confirmed this on all sides, and agreed that except for some comparative illustrations of Scythian, Hellenistic, and possibly one or two non-Pakistani pieces to accompany Ingholt's introductions, so that he could establish pictorially his points of relations of style, all of the photographs would be by Islay so that he could get full credit for the photographic material. Ingholt spoke of the possibility of including Gandhara from the state museum of Calcutta, but we decided against this for the reasons I first gave. Wolff feels that this can really be a significant book in terms of its referent, and so does Ingholt. Especially because Ingholt can use his research in reference to his Scythian book, his Buddha article, and the Yale show in this connection. A wonderful piece of luck. I am positive now that your liking for Ingholt was a stroke of genius as well. He will give it a new angle, and be able to dispove Rowland and many of the others who insist on the Roman rather than the Hellenistic influence. We sat together and made a preliminry selection from the photographs at hand, and Wolff will speak with Islay about what must be done to the photographs before we make the cuts from them. Backgrounds must be touched up, and the numbers and descriptive plaques (the museum's) must be removed from the prints, but Wolff says this can be done and has already been in correspondence with Islay about it. Ingholt had found a substantial number of reproductions of Pakistani Gandhara in other books, but so long as we bring more of them together in one spot, and with a different reference (not Indian art as the focus) we can have something unique. The one important thing is that every illustration must be a better photograph than any which have appeared in print so far. As well as taken from the right angles.

This presents a few slight problems, all of them solvable
I think, if we set our minds to it. A few of the pictures did not come out
as successfully as others, tho the results were remarkably good for a one
visit trip. And a few would be better, for art and archaeological reasons,
if taken from different angles. More significant is the absence of several
categories which Islay would naturally not have been as interested in, but

2

the absence of which would seriously mar the definitive quality of any
book on Gandhara sculpture. We need some illustrations by Islay of more
steatite bowls, of some jewelry, some coins from the era of Kanishka, a
series of the buddha stories in sculpture, some of the pre-incarnation
buddhas, etc. Some particular objects of fame, like the Reliquary of
Kanishka at the Archaeological Museum at Peshawar are missing, and there
were no photographs of model stupas like those in the museum at Taxila.
Equally significant are the objects in the collection of the Guides' Mess
at Hoti-Mardan, of which I spoke in my last letter, which contains among
other things the most important standing Buddha. Any proper description
of any of the photographs, including those already taken, must include
correct measurements of the objects, as well as an accurate description
of the precise stone from which they are carved.

All of this, we agreed, indicates the absolute necessity of
a second visit to Pakistan on the part of Islay, and this I think is
completely to be expected and is in no way a denigration of the superb
work he did, without which nothing could have been projected. I think a
five weeks trip would probably do it beautifully, and in addition to the
new photographs, he might well want to re-take one or two of his earlier
efforts. There is plenty of time for this, since we do not see the book
as possible before next autumn, and work on many of the plates, as well
as the re-touching of the photographs now here could be well under way.
The only thing that bothered me as we spoke was the problem of
have in choosing the particular steatites to photograph, the particular
coins as well, some of the angles for the buddhas (for the important
aspects of drapery, etc.) Also the sheer burden, at the same time, of
taking the measurements, identifying the stone, and such things which are
not properly the province of a photographer, and which we ought not to
expect from him. All of these things are necessary however if the book is
to be what we think it can be, a truly significant turn in the appreciation
of Gandhara, and it is just this possibility which Islay has made evident.

What struck me as we talked, and about which I spoke to Wolff
after Ingholt went, was the possibility that Ingholt should go out with
Islay on this trip, if it could be timed so as to fit in with Ingholt's
academic duties. Ingholt did not even mention such a wish, but if he would
go it would be better for him and the book than a fee. He could take the
measurements, and identifications of stone, help to choose the coins and
stealites from the point of thematic matter, and get a feel which would be
invaluable for the introduction. What do you think? It would be expensive,
of course, but my own hunch is that having gone into it as far as we have,
we ought to do everything to ensure the complete success of the book. Wolff
thinks about 8,000 for the book, some of which would of course come back, but
I doubt if all. On the other hand it looks as though Hilda's things would be
postponed for a while (we talk of that later), and there is money enough in
the kitty for this extra, as well as the chance of getting back a little
more than usual from FABULA. You are the one to say, but I can at least
urge; and Wolff is very excited at the possibility. I hope Islay would be
willing, for it would make the book a real feather in his cap. Let me know
what you think. I shall not mention to Ingholt of course.

So much for that.

I had written several letters to Hilda, and one had gone out when
your first one arrived. I am so unhappy that she has been unhappy at my

3

silence, and I am so glad at the same time that you have been here enough
with me "in season" to know why these silences sometimes occur. But she
has written now, and seems to be in better spirits. I think we have her
where she will be working on her Helen sequence this summer; I urge her to
go on -- it is a fine poem -- though not to hurry, since, between us, I believe
there is a spot here and there in the earlier two sections which might be
altered to lead toward her not-yet-thought-out conclusion. This is one
reason why I have not tried to get first two sections published at length.
I think we must recognize—I can say this to you--that while Hilda is
honestly happy at the success of the novels, she feels a little "out of it."
But this will work out. She wrote me about Pound's puzzling letter about
Freud, and I urged her to ask you to send it on to me. Naturally I did not
send the Freudbuch to him. I remember how he behaved before about this.
Can only imagine that he must have reached a mention of Freud in his new
cantos, and then jumped to the association with Hilda.

I am delighted at the possibility for Kenwin. Something of this
sort is bound to turn up sooner or later. I only wish it could be settled
so far as you are concerned. By all means send over anything you want to
be on this side. It seems a splendid time for an inventory, and it does
not make sense not to take advantage of this moment. The Benjamin books
should I think be kept together. I am delighted to have, as well as the
Sachs and the refugee novel. They all tie in of course. All of the letters
sent so far are in the files, properly arranged, and my office begins to
assume neatness once more.

Have just read the Sat. Rev. review, and liked it. Wolff brought
up another batch yesterday for me to see and send back to him. I like the
way the reviewers now compare among your books, and make the analogies to
other writers of repute with true and proper ease. As I said before, it is
not that Fabula is better or worse, but simply that one's reputation is
cumulative. That is, if there is anything good in it at all, as there certainly is here. Wolff also said he had had two other offers for FABULA,
from firms who had not been interested before; but is happy with Collins
because they made a generous offer for all three books, and wrote a non-haggling and very enthusiastic letter. I shall send them some biographical
material of an acceptable sort. As for Giessen and the TIME, I am glad he
is not reviewing it, for if the review was only because of a news story on
you then it is an improper use of the book section of his magazine.

Glover's dropping of Brooke is shameful. Really, I am more annoyed
at him all the time. But it all fits a pattern.

As for Hudson's Bay: Oh Bryher, why do we spin our dreams? It
seems now that Lizzie has asked guests in August, that little Susan is to
take her fortnight's vacation then and plans to stay at home in order to
play tennis, swim, and save money; and Susan's sister and family are coming
just then from England. It seems impossible this summer; next year will
be different, since we could plan in advance. All that I can say now is
that perhaps with the Kenwin problem not settled, you ought to be nearer at
hand in case of a sudden move on some side; and that the money we save could
perhaps be put toward łslay's and Ingholt's trip. My consolation will be a
few more footnotes for Hawthorne.

We will have our remp later. All love as always,

11 June 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I enclose a copy of the biographical sketch of you which I have written for TWENTIETH CENTURY AUTHORS, and which will probably be used in other connections as well. If you have any objections to it, let me know. It follows pretty closely what seems to be their formula, and the type of material is what the others have contained. You will probably say that there's no point in including all of the titles in the checklist, but one will have to sooner or later, and in any event the things themselves are not really available. The reference to your parents is, I think, all right as it stands. One does have to identify your father, and this is an innocuous way of doing it. The one bit of information I need is the actual date of publication of TWO SELVES. You couldn't remember it here, and the book itself has no date on it. Perhaps Hilda could help. But the important thing is to send me an OK or corrections instanter, since it is already overdue. I'm sorry to have delayed it, but you know how things are.

I've seen the review in *The Saturday Review* and liked it.

Did I tell you that I had "arrived?" I opened an autograph catalogue the other day, and there was a letter from me to some unknown correspondent in 1949 listed for sale in it. $1.00. Not a gala arrival, but I crept in!

All love, as always.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

18 June 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Rather a hectic week, in which I have tried to do a little more with the papers on my desk, as well as begin to get at the Hawthorne letters. Thanks to you I have my assistant again, and have had him to the yearly checking of files against cross files in order to find whether things are in place. As usual they were not: some twenty letters missing from chronological files, but ultimately discovered tucked away in recipient files. All this means work now, but safeguarded headcahes later on. This letter only in sketches, on Friday morning. We drive to Gardner this afternoon to spend until Sunday. My buother's middle daughter being married tomorrow and we required for the ceremony.

Now as for Islay, I did understand that he was busy summers with his portrait work, and ought to have explained rather than depend on your taking for granted that I knew. My idea was possibly next March or April, profiting from the research Ingholt had been doing book and archive-wise for the exhibition this fall. Both Wolff and myself feel that this can be a most important work, and are truly excited -- two new converts to Gandhara. But it must be thorough, and these categories I mentioned ought to be included. We can talk more about this later, but I do hope Islay won't think I have been anything but hugely enthusiastic about what he achieved. I meant only that thematic choices among steatite -- and the smaller buddha stories, plus jewelery and the rest would be hard for anyone but an archaeologist, with a fine knowledge of distinctions and significances in draperies and the rest, to select amongst. These things have already been illustrated as being at Taxila etc., and would be criticised if absent, but they do need Islay's distinction of photography. Then measurements of objects photographed, plus citation of precise material would be a waste of his time, and could be done by Ingholt while Islay was photographing. Importance of settling on it soon, as that Islay himself might prefer to retake one or two pictures, and it would be wasteful meanwhile to make plates if they were to be discarded. This will be the definitive book on Pakistani Ghandhara if we go at it thoroughly.

Thank you for your letter this morning. It was fun to do the sketch of you, pedestrian as it was. I will remove the Adonis if you like; and will check Ellis letters next week to see if anything is to be found there of help. Will let you know what I discover about date of Two Selves. Also occurred to me that perhaps B.M. has a date for it in their catalogue.

It looks as though Hidson's Bay trip, judging from Rita's reports, would really work out better next summer, with our passage

engaged this winter, to make sure of the Churchill trip. A friend of mine thinks it mad to go, says that mosquitoes are like horses, and the whole climate impossible. But this would not bar me nor you, I think. We can discuss. First we should have all available detail. Whales and dolphins sound like too extended a venture. We shall see.

I talked yesterday to my lawyers here about several matters, and asked tentatively about the problem of the Gregories. Generally they agree with me that problems of real income (what it actually will buy) etc make it difficult to set up a capital fund for Gregories from which income will be paid. One way to do it would be to continue as you have, with an annual grant, leaving it to me to carry on if anything happens, and thus permitting adjustments for added expense because of income, shifts in case of unexpected ability on the part of Horace and Marya, which might come if they struck a happy vein of royalties, or the death of either. The other way would be to set up a fund which would exhaust itself both through income and capital grants therefrom, according to the judgment of a trustee; this could have any of a number of reversals of left over capital if any, or could be added to at any time. This kind of fund is often set up by estates for helping people (servants, friends and the like). I would suggest not doing anything until your next visit here, when we could talk to these lawyers (the very best in the state) personally.

I checked again as to whether I should have included the sums of your checks for the savings account as gifts in my income tax statement, and they think not necessary because you are not taxed in the States for such gifts. But they did call attention to a possibility I had not thought of. That is, in case of your death, your estate might consider the savings account part of your assets, sent to me as a loan, and therefore recoverable for British tax purposes, as from the beginning. This would be a complication of course. They suggest, if you are willing, simply a letter to me stating that the checks you have sent me and might send in the future are intended as a pure gift, despite the fact that I might use the funds therefrom in order to satisfy certain objectives which I know would be congenial to you. This only a safeguard of course; actually little is likely to happen. You use your judgment of course; we have always understood each other perfectly on this matter; meanwhile I will check from a friend on just what the Gregories actual situation is. There would be real psychological advantages if they knew they could depend on certain resources. And it looks as though Horace's health would not particularly improve. I admire his pluck and his energy as well as his great abilities.

I have actually started Kenneth's manuscript, and want to finish before sending to Horace; but this will be taken care of. Evenings seem wonderfully free without lectures to prepare for the next day.

I enclose the first comics of a trip to Pakistan I thought you might enjoy for laughs, and possibly might want to pass on to the boys. Humphrey is a middle-western blacksmith who does superb tempering of steel. A mysterious stranger appeared at his forge asking him to temper what looks like a mountain-climbing axe; the disappeared simply saying it should be delivered to him in Pakistan. At last he has arrived there by plane, but meanwhile the Russians are after him thinking the object to be a secret weapon. The sleety girl is a Russian agent. Humphrey takes

his own food with him always, as well as his bicycle as his odd storehouse
and living quarters hitched behind it. Jerry Leemy who suddenly appears
is a boxing trainer, friend of Humphrey's and common friend of Joe Palooks,
who has been in Japan and decided to go on to see Humphrey in Pakistan.
He will obviously turn up later. Ham Fisher's ideas of what goes on in
Pakistan should amuse you. More will follow if you are interested.

More power to you with the story you are writing. I am eager
to see it. And all love, dear Fido, as always.

It is wonderful about Edith. I shall write. I almost called
you by transatlantic phone so that we could woof together!

I have sent copies of your childhood photographs to Pup. The
ghandhara buddha photograph at Yale has finally come, I have added the
translation of the inscription, and am sending to Islay. The book has
already gone to him.

Norman

24 June 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Envelopes of letters to you about FABULA arrive. I enjoy
the reactions as much as you have. Gollancz: "You have twice offered us
Bryher, and we have twice declined her" has all the biblical cadence of
the denial of Jesus. My, he does take himself seriously in everything and
every pose. Masefield's letter was exceptionally nice, I thought, and his
hand seemed stronger than usual, as though his health were better. But I
won't try to speak of them individually, except to smile when I remember
that Agnes thought it was the publishers who gave the title FABULA because
they couldn't take ROMAN WALL.

Poor Agnes, how she suffers in her various roles; yet I
think she somewhat enjoys the agony of being lover, mother, and helpless
slave simultaneously. It does fill life this way, and that is of utmost
importance, and not at all to be smiled at.

I have not yet read the new Duggan, which has arrived. After
reading the Havelock Ellis files, I decided to re-read Gertrude Beaseley's
MY FIRST THIRTY YEARS. I wonder what ever became of her afterwards. The
book is not a masterpiece, certainly, but it does have strength, seems brave
and honest even after the road has been made more passable for such ventures,
and it was a good thing to have brought out. She seems the Emma Goldman type.
Not in particular personality perhaps, but in the general attitude, for my
impression of Goldman has been of a curiously American mixture of naturalism
and romanticism, with a very heavy base of Russian similarity to serve in
addition.

I am very much disturbed by your reports of Walter's condition.
And especially glad that Melitta is to come over this summer to get such
observations as she may need first-hand. Whether this will accomplish much
beside salving one's conscience (not hers necessarily) I don't know. It would
seem almost like some sort of general deterioration. Sometimes this happens
under such circumstances. A patient goes into a physical situation such as
he underwent, seems to recover (and indeed does, in reference to the release
from acute strain which the crisis gave) but in the longer run this is only
temporary, and more an appearance than a reality. For the damage has long
since been done, and the rotting away continues. This without, necessarily,
and return on his part to excessive drinking or smoking. I include the heart
in this; but of course it could be anything.

Anyhow you are quite right not to hang around Kusnacht for these
few days, and p-a-wise you do not really want to. These are signs, you know,
dearest Fido, that you cannot ignore.

I shall send Hilda's letters to Kusnacht until I hear she is
settled in Lugano. I have had such nice ones from her, and I think all is well.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

25 June 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I enclose a review of FABULA from this week's NEW YORKER, just out. It's rather nice, I think, and should help. You see, it marches!

In an odd way I am relieved to find that Walter's trouble is diabetes, for that pinpoints it. It may well be that this specific sort of disorder will be something he can understand, and therefore will be willing to follow some sort of regimen as a result. I believe one isn't supposed to go in for alcohol under the circumstances, and because from now on it won't be simply a matter of his feeling he is treated as a child he may be as good as a child should be. However it is true that he has gotten himself into pretty bad internal shape, and all of these things add up.

Have been spending my first week back at Hawthorne, with some interesting footnotes as a result. Fortunately, last winter I got hold of an immense number of pages of copies of Sophia Hawthorne's letters. She was his wife, and the letters should supply information I need. Meanwhile I am starting at the beginning again, and filling in some notes I could not discover answers to before. Was very proud of myself yesterday when, suddenly, I looked at a quote Hawthorne had made as a small boy, of part of a line of poetry, and told my assistant to look in a Pope concordance. There it was, somewhat altered, but quite unfamous as a line and untypical as a part of line. This cheered me immensely.

Your letter about Gandhara arrived this morning. What an unnecessary amount of bother I have put you to, by my failure to communicate carefully. It only shows how wonderful it is when you can come and we can discuss verbally, correcting mis-communications on my part at once. But we need not worry. Wolff will be seeing Islay in August and the details can be settled then. I shall be seeing him about it at least at the last moment before he flies. Let me repeat however. I never wanted to suggest that Islay should go out this summer. I knew of his summer photography in Rome. I had thought possibly of next spring, tho not knowing of your proposed trip to Ceylon. The book will not come out before the autumn of 1955, so in no case will the book be postponed. Nor would I have suggested that he should go to re-photograph what he had already taken. Wolff naturally wants certain things removed from the present prints; but that is laboratory work, is done all the time, and he will discuss this with Islay. What I did suggest was that because we felt the book would be more nearly definitive (which is what you actually want it to be, and what it should be) if certain categories of additional objects were also photographed. Therefore, if he was to go out for them, then there might be some photographs which he

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 June 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I snatch the typewriter now late in the afternoon, when I leave the library; so forgive incoherences. A certain amount of interruptions so far keep me from achieving too many footnotes, but it marches a little. Today Archie Douglas came down from Providence bringing books he wanted to sell. Alas, took back the turtle with him, but I still hope he will eventually change his mind. Frankly, I did not see going higher than 250 for it, after having set that price. A.D. states he is madly passionate for the turtle, and wants to have it at hand before he finally makes up his mind. He still plans to move to the Southwest in the fall, and that may turn turtle, as one might say, in this direction. Did you ever ask Kenneth about the Limericks, whether what Archie has is Uncle Norman's truly personal copy. Looking at it, I thought it not that but one to which he had added some versions, very neatly, with a possible sale in mind. A.D. wishes 550 for it from the library; but they will not pay, so much as the other book he brought was IN OLD CALABRIA, but again it did not really look like Uncle Norman's personal copy as was claimed. Archie, as he likes to be called, I found had had a cerebral hemmorrhage the morning after he visited me, and although he looks fairly well does shuffle a bit and has lost some feeling in his right side, which only tingless. His wife is now suffering from acute arthritis and a dislocated vertebra, wears a back brace as well. They have three small children, born during the war, late and unexpected. The air-raids must have re-vitalized him. Curiously I do not give up hope that he will decide finally to let me have the turtle, so tell the boys not to despair. Archie was full of reports he had heard of R.A.'s life of Uncle Norman, a most disgraceful affair. Robin wants to sue. I advised not, since I have not read anything but violently antagonistic reviews, and the book, like that on T.E.Lawrence has only hurt R.A.'s dwindling reputation. He seems now to turn against everyone he used to know, but fortunately he does seem pleasanter toward Hilda.

I'm sorry not to have told you that Harper's Bazar did not want the Uncle Norman piece, but were very nice about it. I have not yet sent it out again, but will do so shortly.

I think I wrote you that I did remove the Adonis from the checklist in your biography, and that they liked it. Had myself a little jag last weekend, and re-read (1) DEVELOPMENT, (2) TWO SELVES, and (3) WEST. With great pleasure. You are a better writer now, of course. That goes without saying. But you did have real sensibility and some of your desc riptive passages are really fine. You had just not quite got the sense of the novel as a genre, but that is partly due to an attempt to work in the natrualistic manner which was not really your particular cnp of tea. But reading the passages in which you spoke of having to become a writer some time, gave me a special pleasure in knowing that you have truly achieved it, and that the dream, so to speak, has come true. Of

2

course it has always been true, but so much more richly achieved now that
you have found your voice. But you would not have found it without the
long training. And I liked too, in *Development* your comments on various
poets you had chosen as good. They still are. And there are not so many
of us, whose list holds up completely as yours does. But you speak of your
own book of poems as being published in this period, before you had met
Hilda. FIDO! are you holding out on me? The chronology indicates that
there is something I don't know, some earlier book. You are a wretch, and
I should take a birch to your Fido-rump if I were with you now. You see I
assume that since the rest of the book is pretty straightforward autobiography,
you would not have made this up. So you must hang your tail and tell me.

The ISKANDER came this morning. I am delighted. But since you
say you are already re-writing, I shall read but not report to you until I
have the revised version. I think I will like it. Remember I told you I
had lectured on the science fiction as the myth of our day, the true invention
by which forces could be personalized. Christianity, with its taboos, drove
myth out; science may bring it back. And I include inter-planetary in this.
I shall be eager for the second story as well. Actually I had thought of
holding on to the Douglas until I saw these, to decide which to send first.

I am much amused at the thought of re-punctuating for Collins. By
all means! It will be fun to have variants between the English and American.
I think of course primarily of the American market.

I have finished Kenneth's novel with pleasure. There is some brilliant
writing in it. A little uneven and the book is, I think, too long. Perhaps
75 pages could come out to make it tighter. His only slip seems to me to be
the American publisher's daughter Maggy, if you remember, who shifts from
an incredible American dialect (such as no one ever spoke except in English
novels) to sophisticated repartee and observations which could not possibly
come from the same mouth. (I remember Huxley whose dialogue in THE LOVED ONE,
a friend of mine had to rewrite before its publication.) But I do think Kenneth
maneuvered his characters well, and there is a real tone to the book. Whether
it would go with an American publisher I don't know. I will take or send to
Horace in a few days, and you had better hold up any comment to Kenneth until
Horace and I can get together.

The check also arrived this morning, and I will bank against the
Gandhara volume. Thank you for the little additional letter. I doubt it will
ever be necessary to use; but the lawyer advised. I suppose they know the
contingencies better than I do. It would never have occurred to me. Speaking
of lawyers, did I tell you how nice it was to have the card from Orbe?

I am anxious to hear your observations about Walter, after your visit
to Lugano. This will be rather a crucial period. Fortunate in a way that this
happened before Melitta's visit. I retainly as a doctor she will understand
now that this is more than casual. If too rugged before you planned to leave,
do simply pick up. I will not have you emotionally abused. At least I can
take you away with me for a few days in the fall. Perhaps we could jump to
home and see the boys for a minute. By then the exhibition will have been on
at Yale, and Ingholt should have his desiderata well in hand.

As to the dedication copies of books I'm not quite sure what to say.
Naturally there is always room for them here. I only hate to have you stripped
of all that is intimately yours. These are in a sense which not even letters

3

continue to be. Would it be better to see what kind of a place you get post-Kenwin? If Edith, for example, should come out, she might be disappointed hot to find them with you. But you know the tone better than I do of events in Europe. My own opinion is that attention has been pretty much diverted to the East for the moment. Some day the books should certainly be with the rest of your papers, but I leave to you when, in whole or in part.

I did write Trevelyan asking whether he would be willing to bring over the folios from England, but nary a word on that particular in reply. Too many other details perhaps. I had to supply him with affidavits for his financial support while here this summer on his visit, and that may have been enough to stick in his mind. But why don't you get Maggs to bring them out of storage, and take back to Kenwin after the Scillies. I can bring one or two back when I come, and Pup might bring one if she flies over.

Must close and go to the town house to pick up the laundry.
Yesterday it was pouring down rain and they would have been soaked. Frightful
weather recently, but they promise a good weekend. Let us hope so.

All love, dear Fido,

2

ending. I am eager for the second half to arrive. Why not try it
out on Collins, if spaceships now in vogue in England. They might be
able to place it on your side, and like the idea as prelude or follow-up
to your first. It is an awkward length to market here. I am a little
dubious as to what luck I will have it. John's advice will be good on
this score. By the way, have some phrases from the ballad run thru
Kevern's mind at various early spots, so the ballad takes us one step
further towards pulling together.

As for the ballad, itself, I truly like; and you are wrong to
think I should shudder at the lands beyond the Indus.
It stretches out like an alexandrine measure of distance. Quite perfect.
A very nice accomplishment for Bastille Day!

Very sorry to hear about John L. This is most distressing.
Doris will very much need her holiday, if only she doesn't worry too much
lest John slip his leash while she is in Scillies. Don't forget when you
see her to inquire about the daffodil for Susan. You understand I want
to make this my gift, so I must pay her, though it will only be possible
because of her generosity in letting one go. That is, if she will.

Now I shall be constantly wondering how Walter and Melitta are
getting on. I only hope the Kusnachterlings are really frank with her.
Else?

A wonderful story about Edith! Really splendid, and at heart I
am sure she will think it provided by the gods. And, also, it permits
her to discuss the honor indirectly, which she could never bring up by
herself, otherwise; I presume one doesn't.

Do wish Collins had been happy to follow along the Wolff trail.
Then you would have been saved all these details. However may be inter-
esting to see whatton does have to do, and much much more of course when
it is being established for the first time. I daresay they feel infra
dig not to be on their own. Are they mad? Not to like Sands? They
should be shot. However they will do, I am sure. Quite obvious however
that the British do not want sad books about themselves. Dress Britannia
in a Deer gown and send her off to hear Danny Kaye while the fog closes
in around the island.

Am sorry too to hear about Dean's second child; but you go anyhow.
Do you feel me tug at your leash? You really have no choice. You must
touch the stones with your feet again, and see the shoreline from a small
boat, and smell the wind whistle, and hear the stars crack when they
enter the evening sky.

I enclose a few more episodes in the Pakistan serial. Sorry it
doesn't have more local discolor, but mountains are mountains anywhere I
presume, and safer to draw if you haven't been there. Thought you might
also enjoy the account of Ripley. They were at the shore last night for
dinner. Leave next Monday, and by mid-week will be in Bankok. Back at
Christmas. This point where birds from east and west come together re-
minds me of Gandhara. All seems to be in order there.

Will you, while still in Lond n, have sent to me a copy of
Paul Leverkuehn's GERMAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, published by Routledge&

3

Kegan Paul. Should be interesting to me.

Am engaged in a bit of private intelligence work, on
which I shall report to you early in the week. Until then, all is secret.

By the way, Wolff reports that, including copies for review and
gifts, (what a number! but best advertising) nearly 4000 copies of RW
have gone, so I have given permission for 2500 more to be printed, in
order not to run short. This is fine. It looks as though we might break
even on this one.

I enclose two copies of your biographical sketch; but am surprised
Collins wanted it, since Wolff was to send them a copy of the copy I sent
him. Wolff liked it, I'm glad to say.

Rene's congressional committee causing a great uproar. Said to
be the worst conducted investigation in recent history. Rene can have
gained **nothing** but disrespect in legal circles for this. I enclose a
clipping which was latest development. I really don't see what can possess
him. There are, after all, legal procedures of fair play in evidence
before conclusions are reached by any jury or judge.

Two bundles have arrived: including Benjamin's, "einrich Mann,
Leipzig etc. Many thanks. They will be tenderly cared for.

Must run now to town house and weed gardens and sprinkle roses.
Then back to the shore to a houseful of guests. Lizzie has one girl;
Sue has one girl and two boys for the weekend. "We burst at the seams.

All love and a hug,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 July 1954

Dearest Fido:

The second part came yesterday by post. The new version is immensely improved, much tighter, and the ending is now excellent. I think you have really pulled it off, and I'm proud of you. Especially the final section, now. Putting the complete ballad in makes all the difference; and Kevern's conversation with Jenny is more haunting and meaningful. I still have a personal yen to have Kevern decide to see Jenny only after he knows his mission, altho of course he knew she was there at the theatre. But with Bramble in prospect, Jenny takes the place of re-running back through his life; it is of course just that. So: "Alas, one could always get a ticket now. It had been different before. She need only ask..., but now she was a refugee; perhaps a little like himself, those his exile was in the same spot where, more or less, he had always been." Would it be possible also, tho I rather think you have already done this--yes, I think you have -- touch up Kevern's speak about his empire, like Iskandar's. The new outposts were not geographical any longer, but .... The unrest of science had after all made the old travels possible. Had they been a necessity, despite all the fears. Now there was Tortoise. And I still have a feeling that the Chief's explanation of the precise nature of the condition of those who had fallen (like early expeditions to Everest, or any land beyond the land beyond the ...) is somewhat too specific, and makes one feel that, as I said, in my last, Kevern might wake after the story closes. Perhaps I miss the point here. But hurrah, anyhow! Let me know when you want me to try to place it. Too long for the average magazine, but there might be some .... John's advice would be helpful to me here -- and there are always these new paper backs with their collections. If I do send it out, I'd better buy it from you.

This is a short note, written in the morning before I go back to the library and Hawthorne.

However, just an extra word about the volume of poetry mentioned in *Development*. You must not forget my interim profession. I have searched, and the search was not as hard as I feared it might be, to discover that one Winifred Ellerman wrote REGION OF LUTANY, a 31 pp book of poems, Published on 15 Jan 1914, by Chapman and Hall. Nor perhaps it would be very hard for anyone else who read DEVELOPMENT and started under the assumption that Winifred Ellerman preceded Bryher. Really, Fido, you are a wretch! There is nothing for you to do but to dig up a copy and send to me; otherwise I shall have to advertise in all British papers, and what will that be? For I must not be caught unawares, if I am ever asked; and the only way I can pass it off as unimportant is by showing that I know about it anyhow.

24 July 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I am afraid that my last letters may have missed you,
since they were sent to Lowndes. But perhaps Rita will not be anti-
American enough to refuse to forward them. I was quite shocked by
your story of the evening with the Hotsons. Both Leslie and Mary are
sensitive people, and would not hurt a flea by anything they said if
they could help it. But of course Mary, in her good Yankee way,
can't see with equanimity the failure to resist just the kind of easy
thinking which apparently Rita is following. And she is right. You
remember my talk with the psychiatrists at Zurich, at the Congress,
on my way back; and how they told me of the failure of ambition on
the part of the younger British. Now I have just talked to one of
our very best graduate students, who got his doctorate last year and
is just back from a Fullbright at Cambridge. (More in philosophy than
anything else.) He was disappointed. No one was willing to think
hard, he said, and he is not a follower of any rigid school, so loyalties
to a philosophical creed were not at stake. Both formal and informal
discussions he felt were listless or moribund; the only life, even for
the British themselves, came on the few occasions when American philoso-
phers came to the Cam. London University was the same way. He did not
know about Oxford. But no one wanted to probe, or indulge in self-
examination. What a pity to find the virus spreading.

And how stupid of Rita, with all her background, to think
as she does, both in terms of allies and enemies. Of course Germany is
an enemy, Russia a worse one or at any rate a present one as recent
history shows. And she should know that American neither sought her
power nor wishes to dominate, and that it is not disgraceful for England
to ally herself with the U.S. How could England survive an alliance
with Russia, when there is not even sentiment of race and cultural
tradition to preserve her; nor has her natural orbit ever been within
the continental scheme of things, and England's power has been a thing
otherwise derived, and her strength her lack of involvement. It is
people like Rita, who could so easily get into a situation of responsi-
bility with material, who would frighten me by their supreme confidence
in their own judgment, and who, like this Dr Otto John of East Germany,
who trust themselves to do incredible deeds of disaster. I don't mean
Rita personally of course; I simply mean the type towards which she
seems to drift in sympathy.

I am glad you are asking Collins to get a professional
proofreader. It is deadly work, and I am always blind and staggering
for weeks when that time comes along for one of your books. And it
should be simple now, for their text is easy to work from, and nothing
to be changed, I hope, save their commas. Unless they want a "whilst"

once in a whilst.

We have put the new printing of ROMAN WALL at 3000 copies, and feel sure we will get rid of them. Orders continue to come in, helped by the fine ad in the *Times*. I have given permission to run it again in September. It costs $350 a time, but the effect is good, and I look at it in terms of all three books and also the books of the future. I shall probably do it again about Christmas time. This is a question of building.

I suppose Wolff will have seen Islay by the time this reaches you, and I hope all went well. I slay wrote several very nice letters to Wolff, and I myself wrote him some weeks ago. It will be an exciting book.

sent

Batches of letters have come in from you, just before you left Switzerland, and a nice card from Hilda. I have written her, and will send copious cards from the Pennsylvania section when I drive to Ohio on Monday.

I hope the weather is better on the Scillies for you than it was for poor Robert. Did I tell you what nice letter I had from him. (His, on ROMAN WALL, was by the way one of the best you had. He has real critical power in seeing the problems one faces!) A most dreadful thunderstorm and cloudburst is pouring outside and I am caught without raincoat or umbrella. Am trying desperately to clear up my desk before starting on Monday.

You will hear from me, post Hædgon.

All love to yourself, dear Fide, and my affectionate
greetings to Doris.

Norman

Isbendar still chums to my mind. You need
not worry. I did like it. Very much.

17 August 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I was too confident about writing yesterday. Now,
this morning, your letter of the 14th from the Bristol arrived,
and I begin with it. Am sending to Kenwin, the I hope Monday's
note on Hodgson arrived at Lugano.

I am most upset about Glover. I wish you would
avoid him. It seems to me that the case is clear enough know,
a nd you already know both where he stands and why he stands there.
As to arousing your feelings of guilt, you are too old a hand with
life not to understand that a clever and sadistic person can arouse
guilt feelings in anybody about anything. I can do it in myself,
which does not even demand cleverness. We should all of us like
to be so strong and so powerful that nothing ever went wrong with
those to whom we might have lent such strength; but even with what
strength we have, there are people who are not capable of taking
from what exists. The guilt then is perhaps no guilt for either
side; certainly it is not guilt on the part of a bulldog like
yourself. We know of Glover that what he is trying to do is, in
some mysterious way, to shift from himself any feeling of guilt,
whether this is some personal psychological relationship to the
Bear, or even simply a professional feeling that he has failed in
his own treatment. Of course Walter wants to get out. The only
people who can say whether he should or should not leave are the
Brunners; but the only one who can decide whether you should tie
yourself to him (whether it would actually do him good, or you) is
yourself. All I can do is to confirm what you know to be the right
decision, and that is not to return to him and be jailed. Perhaps
I am wrong in thinking that I know you as well as I do--and that
through the empathy we have for each other, and through the generosity
in which you have relied on me by laying your life open to me in so
many ways, not just in terms of our special relationship to each other
directly, but through your correspondences to others, and especially
the triangle we have established with Hilda as a corner. Let Walter
out, if the Brunners say so, but on the terms you suggest and with his
own and separate establishment. You are not relieving yourself of a
burden in this way, but simply assuming the responsibility of keeping
your strength for the other burdens which are your responsibility too.
This Glover does not realize, but how well I do, and how much I should
like to be there to pat your tail, ruffle your ears, and pick you up.

I am sorry too about Hilda, though I am not surprised
that she is not eating. Yet I think she will get through the summer,
and when she returns to Kusnacht she will pick up again, with her
spirit having been fed by Lugano, if not her body. It would be fine

2

if you were able to take her to Rome. If you do not feel that you
can take the burden on yourself alone, it might be possible to per-
suade her that I ought to get to Rome if I get over in November for a
few days, but that I would not go, you know, if she were to be in
Kusnacht. Between the two of us we could keep her happy, take a drive
or two, have tea, and even creep away by ourselves while she was
resting.

So much for that for the moment. Let me pick up your letters
since I last wrote, and comment on the matters in them. I am sorry
at such much rain while you were in the Scillies. Rather bad luck,
but wouldn't this be a good chance to work in a rainy scene into the
new novel? You haven't tried it before, and it does seem peculiarly
suitable. I don't know when you plan to begin. I had thought that
with luck there might be some chapters to go over when we get together
next. I am eager also to know what Edith will think of ISKENDAR. I
am delighted that she liked the poem. I wrote her some time ago,
saying how pleased I was at her honors, but have not heard. Naturally
no reply was necessary. Eager too to know what George thinks. I always
trust his reactions, though this may not be quite his cup of tea.

Did you take Doris to the specialist in Zurich? I do think a
talk or two with her by the doctors at the saniterium would be excellent.
She has no reason to feel the slightest guilt.

I have not heard from Wolff since he left. He should be back
soon. It was pleasant to know that he had sold ROMAN WALL in Germany,
but of course the Swiss scene is very near, and no doubt they fear the
Russians in much the same way as the Romans did the Alemanni.

As for the 'erman Intelligence book, simply have them send when
it is reprinted.

We were delighted with the many postcards. I shall write Doris
in Cornwall when she is back, and settle the matter of the bulb. If
she is still with you, tell her that I like the idea of its being
available for general showing, and the six bulbs will be fine. Be-
cause I wanted the exact name to please, I told Susan, and she wants
it simply "Susan Pearson."

To return to Iskendar, I think you see what I mean about having
his talk with her serve as the mirror before the dying man, and there-
fore planned only after he knows his assignment. Doris, I think, is
wrong in wanting this subdued or cast out. As for Kevern's final
outcome, I meant only that in the talk with his boss it might be better
to cut the details a little as to what happened to the others. Simply:
"Perhaps it is not death. Who knows? We know so little, and they
may recover, but it will be in a different kind of world, I think."
Wouldn't something like that be enough. But of course it is your
story; I thought only that a little finality had been taken from the
ending, as you gave it.

Now where did you meet Otto John and hear the story from his
own lips. You must steal a moment and tell me. He was a queer one
even in Portugal. I see that the British are now saying that he

3

de-camped because he knew they had grown suspicious of him, and
had been for ten months. I doubt it. He was their man. But how
he took the Americans in! Think of him coming over here in June
and meeting with all the intelligence circles. It is too much!

Speaking of the "Game", I am a little disturbed to see
Atlee and his group dining in state in celebration of Indonesian
Independence Day. Really! No matter how one feels about that,
or about the sensibilities of the French, a kind of decorum in the
past would have kept them from such a formal blessing so soon after
the event. Apparently the British, or many of them, still believe
that Russia is not imperialistic, and that in a friendly combination
of British and Russian communism, the Russians will be so grateful
and flattered that they will take leadership from England. At least
I think people like Rita must think this. If it is only a matter
of trade, then they should know that the Russians are clever monopo-
lists who only tease into confidence the smaller nations and concerns
they mean to gobble up.

I will see that the Shelley book by Sylvia Norman is sent
directly to Kenwin from the Oklahoma Press. It will be quicker that
way. I do not know the book myself.

Must close, as I have been staying on in town to attend a
final dinner in honor of the group of French Lycee teachers who have
been at 'ale for the last six weeks. Now they go on a trip to the
West Coast. I addressed them on the 14th, and have my Legion d'Honneur
ribbon out to wear again tonight.

Tell Doris that Susan won a blue for an arrangement in the
invitation class at a recent Connectecit show -- last week. She did
a splendid thing, with zinias, the foliage of something called Dusty
Miller (the gways of the Dusty Miller blended perfectly with the gray
tinge of the zinias), plus some peaches and deep-colored purple grapes.
The problem was to do an arrangement which would be suitable for a
magazine cover. It was quite spectacular.

All love as always, and keep your pecker up!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 August 1954

Dearest Bryher:

A few oddments for your
possible amusement. The comic I have
gotten a little tired of, but clipping
them from the paper was a kind of devotion
to you while I was not writing letters. Per-
haps the only truly comic thing about it, is
that two days after Humphrey reached the top
of K2 it was announced in the papers that
the Italians had! Which is being timely, to
say the least. The strip goes on, but I
shall not send. A Pakistani guide claims to
have reached there first, and Humphrey, at
the request of the British and Thorne's memory,
is wrestling him for the honor.

I had never seen a Pangolin. Per-
haps we should send Marianne to see it. As
for the Elsinore affair, I got lost midway in
following his logic.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

23 August 1954

Dearest Bryher:

How happy you make me to have liked the little letter
about Hodgson. I didn't keep a copy for myself, so if you have some
made, send me one and I'll see if it's as good as you say. I did forget,
however, one little touch that I wanted to include. Suddenly in the
fury of his day of judgment for the world, I looked with horror to see
his upper teeth slip slowly downward in his mouth. It was as though the
earth were disintegrating before my eyes. Then I realised that his plate
had come loose.

I am glad you would not go back to Zurich until after
Glover had left. You must be quite firm about this, and there is no
use in pretending to him. As for any feeling of guilt on your part, I
wrote you about that in my last letter, and nothing could make me change
my opinion that it is simply his way of shifting guilt from himself.

As to Milds, I suppose it is inevitable that she shows
some signs of strain; for you must remember that she has just finished
her Helen poem, and her powers must have been drained. She has sent me
Part III, and I am completely delighted with it. It brings the whole
poem sharply together, and has great strength within its gentleness. As
to her not wanting to publish, this we must recognize to be chiefly the
fact that she has actually not published for some time, and that this is
a kind of defense mechanism quite understandably at work within her. Her
seeming refusal denotes an act of will; her longing to be in print would
be insufferable without any tangible immediate satisfaction. Farrar has
been away most of the summer, but when September comes, and my assistant
is free and Farrar back, I shall settle the matter of the Freud with him;
and once that is in order, try to see to it that we find someone to do
the Helen. I myself think the Helen one of her very best, and I know
that there will be others who do also. I fear a little however that some
of the average reviewers will find it a bit diffuse in the earlier parts,
and perhaps it is the kind of poetry not very much in the mode for the
moment. But let it have its chance for those, like ourselves, who do
understand its true worth!

I wrote her a long letter on Saturday, and could tell her
that Auden was using some of her newer poems in his anthology. And best
of all, I thought, that I have signed with the BBC Third Program which is
to do an hour and a half's radio version of her ION, with the possibility
of repetitions of this. I have asked them to let her know when it is to
be done. They said simply in the last quarter of the year. I also asked
for copies of the script, which I thought would be interesting for each of
us to have. This seems to me very fine. It may have been occasioned by

2

the review in the T.L.S. of, I think it was, Murray's translation, which
the reviewer called not nearly so good as our Hilda's.

I had lunch this noon with Ingholt, who had just had a very fine
letter from Islay who in turn had just seen Wolff. I have heard not a
word from him since he left, but that is not surprising, for he must be
infinitely busy, and besides business he has a wife to write to. Christopher,
judging from the letters you sent me, seems to have gotten all from Greece
that one might have wished him to. Did I tell you that several weeks ago,
I too had a splendid letter from Islay, who seems to understand perfectly.
Ingholt's book on Hatreais out; I have my copy which came to me as a member
of the Conn. Academy, direct from Copenhagen; his own have amusingly enough
not yet arrived, but he asked your address to send one to you, and will send
also to Islay. Ingholt is as enthusiastic about the book as ever. He was
full of plans for the show at Yale, and they have found some excellent
pieces from dealers in New York to borrow for the show, as well, they hope,
as those from other museums in the States, and one or two from abroad.
Perhaps instead of my coming over, you should hop across and see it when
it's up.

I was alarmed to see the second defection to East Germany last
Saturday, again from a key position. Very clever of the Russians, and it
should be effective in helping to kill any chances of a west European mili-
tary accord. The whole thing frightens me, and one begins to see the line
of their game. To wit: West Germany can be nothing but a buffer state in
any war, and with atomic weapons will only be devastated. Letter, then, to
be a Czech and alive than a hero and dead; since it is not even certain that
the U.S. will live up to any promises our State Department might make,
whether made sincerely at the time, or simply for the sake of the sound
waves in a troubled air. The French are using the same argument to themselves,
and are beginning to prefer a period of sleeping slavery to annihilation.
Worst of all, so are the British; for they do not relish the idea of being
a base for attack with new weapons. They see the U.S. as regarding any of
the nations that way: places of convenience, by which American soil, not
there's, can be snared. Of course there is a little truth in this, even if
nothing heroic attends it; and one understands how the dark ages could have
crept up on a world unwilling to keep the lights burning. Perhaps too, if
one looks with the eyes of the gods, a century or two of darkness does not
matter. But you and I, dearest Fido, have dogs' eyes that see in the dark;
only we do not relish being dogs in quite that way, or having to forage in
the pitch of night. We want even more than the moon as light, -- much more,
that is, than the reflection of past suns.

More and more I think you are right, and that we must cache away
and see that at least there is a storehouse of food to return to. Who knows?
We may kennel together yet.

All love,

15 September 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Very dank and raw outside, almost like late October.
All of which I state for no other reason than it seems particularly
cosy to sit down at the typewriter and write to you. The revised
ISKENDAR came just before the second hurricane; I took it to the
shore with me while I waited the storm out, and it was as though
Cecil B DeMille had done a production for it. Only after all the
tumult of the storm's advent, like the Campbells it never really came
up in terms of tidal waves, so I could thank your story for whati
climax I had. I have read it again, just to dissociate the text from
its temporary milieu. It is really very good. It was good to begin
with, but this carries the pace and builds up the tone better, is more
of a whole. I am proud of you. I have put the changes you suggest
into the second section from Wollford, agreeing that Turkish was better
(because more precise, when one speaks of a version) than "eastern" could
be (since all versions were presumably that). And I was delighted with
Woolford's error in reading moon for room. I had puzzled a bit over
that, but let it stand as only an interplanetary amateur. I could match
the error with one in the reminiscence I wrote of my visit to Hodgson,
where I spoke of tight-hipped women be-hatted like Irish March. I wrote
it that way, I agree, meaning of course Iris March (Michael Arlen's
darling in her green hat), but I am intrigued by error. Is it p.a.?
and am I a nature boy from Eire. At any rate my text makes for unusual
bonnetry.

One or two little queries came to mind as I read your ms,
which I might just pass on for your possible interest, though none of
them are of any particular consequence, being merely the sort of thing
one could chat about. Don't think me too schoolmasterish!

p. 10: Change to "He was then so startled at having slipped back...."? I read the first "that" first as "so startled that in consequence he had ... " and fell flat on my face with the second "that" as a consequence. I always hate the possibility of running a false trail when I read a sentence.

p. 11: ✓ "But to live for the Department, that was mother...." I found a little confusion as to whether the Department was mother..., or whether it was a parenthetical remark. Punctuation might make it easier for some: (a) "for the Department that was..." or (b) "for the Department; -- that was mother...."

p. 15, line 21: Wd it help to have a question mark to conclude Robinson's speach? "...?" In any event I would prefer a new paragraph beginning with "Kevern nodded,..." This would clarify that it is Aevern speaking afterwards, without waiting for the final sentence.

2

p. 17, line 15: I found a little confusing if you mean "atom" as a measure of distance, which it is not. Anyhow, Americans (probably not British) often say carelessly "push me the cake" etc, which was the way I first read it to my confusion. Would it be better simply to be satisfied with "pushed him that millemetre too far?" This is technical for U.K. as well as U.S.

p. 18, line 17: How about using "uncoded" for "au clair" in this particular spot, since the fact of the necessary italics for the latter makes the eye include it as part of the message. The problem is different (or rather no problem at all on p. 21).

p. 25, 4th para: This is my only serious query, but this sounds more like D-F-ing than decoding as you present it, and not the sort of thing that the material would provide. But this would probably bother no one but myself.

p. 28, line 12: for "but asking" read "just asking"?

p. 29, line 20: think you had better clarify who it is to whom the words of the ballad come back. Perhaps "came back to Kevern" instead of "to him." It is just possible if you made a new para, it might be a chance to make a three-word slanting reference to Jenny, as preparation. (I am not at all sure of the advantage of this). Quite gratuitously, I suggest adding after "planetary enthusiasm" the sentence: "That, at least, was not mathematical." This would carry out his statement on p. 28 to Robinson: "I let Sagby persuade me to join, but it's too mathematical..."

p. 30, line 4: for this own voice ask" read "his own voice put the question."
There's always a difficulty after a question mark within dialogue as
to whether a completely new sentence is begun afterwards. This way it
doesn't matter.

p. 40, line 3: Alternate suggestions here, all based on the fact that I don't think that Perkins, from his driver's seat, could really see the girls legs. Possibilities (a) for "Quite a good pair of legs" read "a nice pair of breasts", which would be both affirmative and possible, though possibly precocious if used with the final "child", for which some slang phrase (the equivalent of "dame" -- not Edith --) should be substituted. Or (b) delete after "with anger."
lines 7-8: Wdn't headlines be better expressed in caps: HOPES OF A SETTLEMENT. (?)

p. 44, line 11: wd it be better to read "who knew than an end might really have come"? The final sentence of para leaves alternate possibilities.

p. 46, line 16: now Fido! "more than life-size storks"! "rather plump"? She must have been gargantuan! Think of the area it would take to "sprinkle" with enlarged storks. Hast 'ou e'er seen a stork? Surely I've caught you here, so that you'll cry ouch!

p. 47, line 15: I'm not sure about British usage, but we would say "through weeds" in the plural, not the collective singular.

3

p. 49, line 1: wdn't it be better to read "enthusiasm in his superior's voice" than "in his friend's voice." I wouldn't have suspected that they were in this category, from the early passages.

p. 54, line 1. May I delete initial "and" and start new sentence with "The absurdity..."
line 6. This is probably mere fancy on my part, but I should have imagined she would call him Ernst. It might give a rather pretty foreign touch immediately to her and to their association earlier. But this is not important. That he is really Earnest is shown at beginn

p. 55, line 12: HOPE in caps? as before, if you change there. I gather you did not want the plural here.

p. 57, line 19: Not sure of British usage. We would say "shore leave" rather than "shore liberty", but keep British.

p. 59, lines 12-13: Would like a dash after Yet, to prolong the query: Yet, --- would it have.

The word "stayed" puzzles me, perhaps because of difference between British and American. That is, "remained"? (continued the same relationship indefinitely?), or "slept"(as one often expressed what must actually have been a wakeful period). I suppose the point is that without bothering one way or the other I simply assumed that that they might have slept together, and therefore found the word "stayed" peculiar. Why not use "remained" since it goes with "bind".

p. 60, line 1: I don't quite know why I'm thrown off a little by the use of "Mary Thresher's" rather than "Miss Thresher's scarf," but it does seem to me that Kevern's personality, and type, are so well established in terms of the kind not often called by his own first name, and as one who didn't at all like the Thresher type, that he would think of a substitute more in the manner of "that substitute--Miss Thresher I believe her name is" than so individually. On p. 61, line 12, you think of it in terms of the same sort of sensibility for Kevern; but on 60, line 14, you have Kevern hear her as "Mary" when she sounds frightened. Do you see what I'm trying to say? On page 62, line 16, you switch the sensibility to Jenny, and certainly here it would be "the girl was stunned," not "Mary was stunned."

p. 62, lines 21-23: I find the transition difficult from "because she would not sleep with him" to the next sentence. It sounds as though her dictation speed was analagous to her sexual speed, and as a result no one asked for her permanently for either bed or desk. Anyhow, why should she be a substitute because she could take dictation more swiftly than others: this is supposed to be an asset, and it would only satisfy her parents if she said she hadn't yet reahed a suffic-ient speed. My own bunch would be to drop the sentence out, so that after "because she would not sleep with him," the next sentence would begin "Then she remembered Ruth."

p. 72, line 28: You will shoot me for this, but I can't help feeling the line "in that smooth hair" is not sharply enough defined in terms of whose hair is smooth. "In her smooth hair"(?); "In his smooth hair"(?); (c) "In their smooth hair"(?) The poem comes off very well indeed.

16 September 1954

Dearest Bryher, again:

Actually it is tomorrow from the time when I began
the letter, so properly there is a new date.

My mind is never absent from you and all that you
are going through. Nor from Walter also, though I am sure he does not
have the same awareness of consequences, and it is a blessing that this
is so. I wrote before that whatever you did would be right; I know that
this is so, and if the doctors advise an operation I am glad it is being
done. In some ways, not practical ones, the doctors may be right, for
if Walter has thought it was ulcers then he will be satisfied that something
is being done about them. And I am infinitely relieved that Melitta could
be in Zurich when all this was taking place; for she will always have the
feeling now of immediate and first-hand knowledge of the situation, as well
as its necessities. Not surprising that she has collapsed; I am only glad
that you are made of iron.

Do hit out for Rome and the boys for a bit, as soon
as you can. They will be of infinite help. Tell Kenneth, when you see him,
how good I thought his contribution to Nancy Cunard's volume. I read it
with great interest, and have taken out Acton's book from the library to
read that as well. Quite intrigued by the Cunard volume, alternately good
or kitsch. At heart I think she must be a great innocent, and still rather
virginal in a special sense. One did get a picture of Uncle Norman for which
I am grateful.

Various envelopes of letters to you have come in, for
which my thanks. Very easy this way simply to put them in their proper
folders, and I suggest you continue rather than to store chez toi, and then
ship en masse. Also delighted at the thought of the Close Up papers, which
will be most important to save. Presume the second half will come along
eventually. By the way, when you see Kenneth what would you think of
suggesting to him that we have a copy made of Borderline to be given to
the Eastman House Museum in Rochester, the chief collection now. I believe
you said the only film was in London; but if the copy were not made there,
the curator said he thought they could make one in Rochester for about
three hundred dollars (the figure was only speculative). I do think that
there should be a copy in the States; Kenneth could of course control its
use. But it is a classic. Isn't this the one that has Hilda in it also?
I suppose if Rochester made the print, the original would have to be
shipped here from London, and then could go back. You might bring it on
one of your trips.

It also occurred to me that if Pup stopped off in

5

Paris on her way back, she might pick up the Valery watercolor, if you were willing, and bring it back with her. It would be difficult, I should think, to risk shipping by ordinary means.

I have had a bill for the Sylvia Norman book, sent to Kenwin, so it should reach you eventually. I forgot to ask you if you wanted a copy of Faulkner's FABLE. I have not read yet. Did send a copy of Ezra's new translations from the Chinese to Hilda for her birthday, and presume you can take a look at it with her sometime; am not, therefore, sending you one. Not very much exciting published so far, except that I bought an advance copy of Marya's selected poems, published by Grove, which looks good. Suppose she will send you one, but will send if you like. Prescott now plumping for an historical novel on the Vikings: THE LONG SHIPS, by Frans G. Bengtsson. Shall I get for you. You may have a little time for reading if you stay at all at Ausnacht. By the way, it seems to me that the Tribune Book Section has fallen off a little, and I am annoyed that they give so much space to records and art in what should be devoted to books, there being other places for these things in the paper. Would you like me to see if I can subscribe also to the *Times* book section? I think now it can be done. Horace reviews for it now, and I enclose an excellent review of his on Wyndham Lewis.

Had thought to cut out and send Atlantic articles on his China trip, which the NYTIMES is carrying. But they are too unutterably banal and say absolutely nothing. They would simply waste your time. I enclose only an editorial from the *Times*, which gives the best opinion here of the impact of his visit.

Am writing to Doris about the bulbs, since she spoke of getting me also some miniature narcissi, which a friend grows, for Susan's garden on the banking beside the house. Will need to know how many extra permits to get. Pleased that she had her conversations with Brunner, but only fear her situation at home will grow worse.

Bad news about Kenneth's sister. I had hoped that with Uncle Norman's death he would be relieved of such responsibilities for a while.

Do not forget when you look at Kenwin to search for a copy of REGION OF LUTANY. I must have one, from some source, for the sake of possible reference. Send, or bring when you come. I keep wondering if it would not be a good idea for you to run over and see the exhibition at the art gallery here, when it is on. Have not heard from Wolves lately, though Kurt must be back by now. Once my desk is cleaned up I shall, I hope, be going to New York more frequently this fall, to work on Hawthorne, and will call on them. Another ad appeared the day after Labor Day, when the New Yorkers were back; and I presume the second printing of ROMAN WALL is now available. I had a check for $373.97 from Pantheon as return on the three books, and will deposit it in savings account.

(Mid-morning mail just arrived, and the package of CLOSE-UP correspondence in it. Thanks!)

The hurricane, though rather nerve-wracking, fortunately turned out
to be less severe than we were led to believe. The first one, a forthright
ago, took some sixty-odd lives and did millions of damage; and there had
been much criticism because people were not properly warned. This time
the agencies doubled their efforts, and although completely justified by
all symptoms, did manage to terrorize the people. 1500 were evacuated in
Branford alone, where our summer place is; emergency stations were set up
in town halls and other centers, and the shores were constantly patrolled.
Even over television we were specifically warned to evacuate Johnson's
Point, late Friday night; and twice the Civil Patrol came down to ask us
to leave. I was put in rather a difficult position, for Susan's widowed
sister remained at the end of our road, with her four children; and my
brother-in-law next door also stayed, putting up my mother-in-law. Secretly
I felt that it was silly not to go to our place in town, but the sister-in-
law did not want to go, and wanted to know that I was available. So we were
all among the "stubborn ones", as the radio next day put, who remained.
Saturday morning it was raining hard, and altogether it put down five and a
half inches of rain, accompanied by northeast winds of up to seventy miles
an hour. But curiously, because the wind came directly against the rising
tides, and the rain flattened the surface of the waves, there was not even
spray cast up from the rocks; and all that was necessary was to batten down
things and sit it out. Susan had it much worse in Maine, where she had gone
for the weekend, and got much more in the direct path of the hurricane, while
as for us the hurricane suddenly veered and we got chiefly its fringe.
Actually we lost electricity at the Point for only five hours, so nothing was
lost in the frig, or such receptacles. Yet at the end of the day, when the
storm had abated, I found myself exceptionally tired from the strain.

The weather has been miserable since, a cold drizzle or rain constantly, with the temperature chiefly in the fifties. So if my letter has been less than sprightly you can blame it on the elements.

All my love, as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

25 September 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I thought that this last week would be comparatively
quiet, since neither the graduate nor the undergraduate school open
until Monday. But it did not prove so. Too many of both categories
came back early, and in each case wanted to clear schedules and
other problems before the rush started. So I could not write to
Home as I had intended, and my good will remained little more than
that.

But I am so happy that you went. It does look, helas,
as though you would have to remain near Walter for awhile. At least
during these first first weeks after his illness. I fear that he
will have a tendency to cling all the more; and although you must
(repeat MUST, as we used to say officially) break away at regular
intervals, there will be every compulsion to make things easier for
him. It looks as though Malitta would be little help; it is curious
in a way that she has so little inner strength. I might have thought
that she would stand up to this crisis, as people sometimes do when
they are normally weak. But she seems simply weak; it is easy to see
why Walter was difficult for her, but even easier, I fear, to see why
she was not easy for him. I am rather anxious too, though you will
be a better judge of this matter, not to have Hilda return to Kusnacht
too soon, or until Walter's situation becomes somewhat more clarified
in one direction or the other. For quite different reasons than Melita's
she has not much nervous strength, and the inevitably morbid
atmosphere might well wreck the long-term advantages of Kusnacht as
a womb.

The boy's apartment in town sound splendid. Do give me
more details of all this, as of Uncle Harold. He always moves as a
rather mysterious figure in my mind.

I am particularly sorry not to have written to Rome to
speak about Kenneth's manuscript. Horace and Marya are at the last
news still away, though I shall try them with a letter at their new
address this weekend. I had not wanted to send the manuscript to
Maine, for I wanted him or myself to be able to move with it on the
bloom of his reaction after having read it. News of their continued
stay in Maine came from a Charmion von Wiegand whom Horace had directed
to me with some letters by Hart Crane to her which she wanted to sell
to the Library.

I was much pleased with the CLOSE UP papers which are
not in the steel muniment room of the filing cabinets. Also the various
smaller envelopes of current correspondence which find their appropriate
places. The latest check for the savings account has arrived and been
banked. The accounts are in good shape now, and should carry for some
little time.

2

You as ked me about the progress on the Hawthorne letters,
and I realize that with all that happened this summer, plus my
concentration on Hodgson in my letter about the Ohio trip, I haven't
really brought you up to date on the editing. This summer was by
all odds the most profitable I have spent. Thanks above all to the
grant from the savings account which you gave me -- and without
which the progress would have been completely impossible--I had the
constant services of my assistant who had reached the stage of being
tryly useful in ferreting out things even when he was completely on
his own. I kept steadily at it, in order to make the most of his
time, using him to fetch books, run errands, and dig in genealogies.
Bits and pieces begin to fit together, and problems were solved that
had puzzled me for years. Not intrinsically important problems in
each event, for a good deal of what I do now is like filling in the
corners of crossword puzzles; but the important things is the neatness
and completeness which now appears. And my mind seemed able to put
two and two together. Let me give you an abysd example: when Hawthorne
married and moved to Concord, his wife left shortly for a visit to her
mother in Boston. H wrote her that Mrs Hale said corned beef should be
cooked thus and so; and then wrote afterwards that Mrs Hale would be
proud of how well his cooking turned out. For several years I had
tried to find some neighbor of Emerson's or other Concord resident who
would fit this description. But one morning I looked at the problem
again, and the obvious appeared. See if there isn't a cookbook by
Mrs Hale, I told the boy, and there was. Not only that but Mrs Hale
proved to be the first reviewer of Fanshawe, Hawthorne's first book.
This delighted me no end, and afterwards when anyone asked me what I
had accomplished this summer I would say: discovered the source of
Hawthorne's recipe for cooking corned beef! But then, carrying on the
analogy, when Hawthorne had written his wife some years later that her
friend Dr Moss said so and so about the care of children, I had the
hunch that Dr. Moss might also be an author of a book and not a neigh-
boring practitioner. And so he proved to be. But there were more
important things turned up. After a while with the old gentleman in
Ohio, I took back with me 280 single-spaced typed copies of letter
written between Hawthorne's mate al uncles and aunts from 1800 to 1850
(H was born in 1804), and the consequence of this (since his mother's
family were the ones with whom he lived as a boy) was that I had to
redo all of my annotation of the early years. But with what success!
An immense amount of fresh data and explanation turned up, and the
results are really impressive. And I feel for the first time the tone
of his boyhood surroundings. Then, further, I had some 1500 pages of
copies of letters by H's wife, from her girlhood on, and immense parallel
data and innumerable identifications have been made possible by this.
I won't say yet that I see the oasis at the end of the desert march, but
I do feel as though I could smell fresh water at last. As I told you
I am having a somewhat lighter teaching schedule this fall, and if I
can clear away things I hope not only to be able to spend two or three
solid days a week on the annotation, without losing the summer's moment-
um, but also to take trips to Boston (to go over the Longfellow papers),
to New York to go over further letters by his wife, to Salem, and to
Concord. And I have another first-class researcher who has agreed to
go to Washington for some weeks and, following my directions, go through
the National Archives for further papers relating to Hawthorne's political
career and various employments by the government in the customs house.

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All this makes me very happy, and as well deeply grateful to you for making it possible. Actually I shall probably dig again, if you are willing, into the fund for enough to make the "ash
and my own excursions possible. I feel now as though a year or two
more, and I would be ready simply for putting it all into shape and
then into print. The nice thing about it is that for the moment it all
marches quite swiftly and in order, really easier than I might have
thought.

As to coming over in November, I don't quite know what to say.
For I should love to come of course; but it would be to see you, and
I really wonder whether with "alter's unexpected condition --unexpected
when we were planning the visit --, plus your work on RUAN which ought
not to be interrupted, it would not be better to forget it for the
moment. If you are lucky enough to make progress with RUAN, then the
very best thing would be for you to send the sections along to me, so
that the Wolves and I could see them; and then run over yourself for
a week or two in order to make any little changes here that you might
wish. If it is to come out next spring, the Wolves ought to have it
made as easy for them as possible to get out, and we will need to plan
what publicity it is to get. A few informal meetings ahead of time
between you and us, and between you and one or two reviewers would work
out very well indeed. What do you think?

Susan's greenhouse is nearly finished, and she is in seventh
heaven. I cannot thank you enough for your help in getting the green-
house begun. It is simply the one thing she has always wanted, and she
cannot take her eyes off of it. Actually it would have been done had it
not been for the hurricanes and the weeks of bad weather which have
followed. You may remember that our living room had two sets of French
doors. One of them is the entrance to the greenhouse, so that the
west side of the house did not have to be broken into; and the whole
thing fits beautifully into the structure of the house itself. We are
eager for you to see it. We moved into town yesterday, and are nicely
settled.

All is in order with Doris in regard to the bulbs, and the permit
has been sent off to her. I wrote before the permits came here, and have
written again since. Thank you for arranging that too. You have a magic
touch.

We go back to the shore today to pick up more things to return to
town, and will miss the first football game. It looks as though Yale had
a good team after a long spell of indifference. Come and see one.

All love, as always

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

4 October 1954

Dearest Bryher:

Have come to the office tonight to write you, recent
days having been full, and now I find that having brought the several
packets of letters to you, which arrived in today's post, I forgot at
home the long letter from you which would have been what I chiefly
intended to answer. However I shall perhaps remember much of it, and
will finish the rest, as I could not in all probability do tomorrow.

I have thought of you so often during these past weeks,
even before the final moment of Walter's death. Perhaps I feared most
that he should live; and when I say that, I am thinking chiefly of
him and how doleful the months would have been to him. And now I am
glad that things are in order, more or less at least; Melitta returned
to the States, and the chance given you to re-sort and re-begin. Thank
you for sending on your letters to him; they belong with the group of
course. So would Hilda's, were she willing. There are so many references
to him. If there should have been an extra snapshot, perhaps one should
go in his folder. One should see. And I am grateful too for sending
along the Pound. By its description I do not think I know it; at any
rate I do not have it, and it will find its place.

Incredibly busy days since I last wrote. Last Thursday I drove to Hartford with Gallup (the curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature) to borrow a few things for the exhibition Yale has put up in honor of Wallace Stevens' 75th birthday last Saturday. After we picked up the things which a young poet had, we went on to the great marble halls of the insurance company to be there as the hundreds of employees poured forth, among them Stevens with whom we went to lunch. He has become really mellow, and seemed always to be smiling beneath his close-cropped grey hair. We were like two business men as we drove to his favorite, a canoe club, on the banks of the Connecticut River, and talked about the industrial future of Hartford. The club itself was a most unlikely place, very much a sportsman's rendezvous with a prominent bar whose walls were solid with colored photographs of female nudes. Stevens pointed them out to me as he introduced me to the bartender, rather winking while he watched my reaction and of course not at all interested in them himself. Since the lieutenant governor of the state had preceded us into the club, my only answer seemed to be that every one of the nudes should be elected to the state legislature, and this was received with obvious approval as being sufficiently non-committal. There was a large dining room whose chief ornament was a dark-stained canoe hung from the ceiling, and this seemed to be the only immediate connection of the club with its name, save its site on the river bank where all sorts of japanese-lantern festivals must have been held at the turn of the century. We sat on the porch for some martinis, and Stevens was chiefly concerned with expanding on his disapproval, even horror, of

2

a statement by John Crowe Ransom that Stevens advocated a "true and new nobility." This is nonsense, he kept saying; I am interested only in "the good" — "le bien." I must say I sympathized with him, for I am a good deal uneasy about this category of an elite, which the Southern group are always talking of, as though the cavalier class had been replaced by an aristocracy of professors and poets, supported by a slave order of sycophant students as public. All in all the lunch passed most pleasantly, and we talked of gardens instead of monarchies. He seemed to be delighted that I was to go to New York the next day for the luncheon that Knopf was giving in honor of his birthday and the publication of his collected poems. We agreed to meet there, rather than go down by train together, but to return with each other; and shortly after my arrival at the luncheon Mrs Knopf surprised me by saying that Stevens wanted me to sit with her and Marianne Moore at the small head table. I think he wanted protection. Mrs K is a foxy little woman, as he remarked afterwards, and he did not have very much to say to her. But he was absolutely delighted to be with Marianne, as was I, and later we walked from 60th Street downtown to 42nd with her, stopping off at Jensen's while he bought a piece of silver with our help for a wedding present. They were wonderful as a pair. Marianne was chipper in her black tricorne hat, and the two joked together in the upmost rapport. Marianne was feeling a little tired, having worn herself out with worry about her friend Kauffer, the artist, who has had a stroke, but told me that she felt she could not be absent. Stevens was boasting that he had sold two poems to VOGUE for 200 dollars; Marianne capped him by her announcement that she had sold an article on the development of medicine to the Ayer Chemical Company for 500! Each of course took immense delight in the incongruity; they were hardly commercial about it. But Marianne has promised me a copy of her article when it appears, since it will be only in the company's trade journal. I had not known that her collected essays were about to appear. She was busy with them. We left her as she was about to buy a dress from Sterns. "$15.95," she said proudly; and then added, "it's a very nice dress!" To which Stevens replied, as solemnly as though she were to buy a creation from Dior, "Marianne, it should be nice at that price!"

Stevens and I had a half hour to kill before the train, and so sat at the Biltmore bar while I had a beer and he had a seltzer water; and I did have the fun, (remembering the stab in the dark I had made in that little tribute to him I had sent, when I said how much he must have owed to Santayana—a link no one had ever pointed out—) of asking him if he had known Santayana. He smiled, knowing why I had asked, and said: of course, very well; after he had been at Harvard a while he had a note from Santayana asking Stevens to call, then Santayana asked him to bring his poems. And the next day Santayana sent him a sonnet. So it was a good guess on my part after all.

The late Friday afternoon train was crowded, so we could not sit together after all; but we had perhaps been together long enough.

Saturday I worked in the garden, on late autumnal weeding, and finished two beds and the ornamental shrubs as nicely as though I had run a carpet sweeper over the intruders in the dust. Saturday night was Mrs Bennett's birthday, and we went to a party at the shore for her. Sunday Susan worked on two enormous arrangements in silver and white for

3

the podium at today's 25th anniversary of the Connecticut Garden Clubs, and at night the presidents of the Vermont and New Hampshire federations came for dinner and to sleep, so that we had finally all of the panoply of a meeting of the nations of Western Europe.

Today I had the first meeting of my graduate seminar, which is as polyglot as ever. Some nineteen students: a Dane, a Jap, a Spaniard, an Australian, a Pole, a German, two French, etc etc. How can I ever bring them all together into an understanding of what American writers were trying to do in the 20th-century? But it should be interesting, and I hope it works out.

A letter from Leslie today; he and Mary arrived through storms at sea, and the excitement of Mary's sighting a whale, with appropriate cries of thar she blows to the crew and passengers. They are off at once to Sorrento for the rest of the month. He sent me a copy of the new book which arrived this morning, and of course I was delighted with the dedication. He writes that the T.L.S. carries a rare review by Wilson, so he is in seventh heaven. In writing him I told him about Walter, as I told Marianne. I trust you did not mind. I also told Helen Wolff since I knew Kurt would be interested. He did not return until last Saturday so I did not try to see her alone on Friday. Will put the few corrections in *Iskender* and send off at once. Had I seen them I should have carried it down with me.

Will stop the letter at this point, until tomorrow when I can add matters I have forgotten from your letter....

**Tuesday morning:** I notice the chief omission last night was in regard to your papers in the States, and the books --all this as for your will. As far as access to the papers goes, that is naturally without saying. If for the sake of simplification you wish to pass title to them into my hands, I presume that all necessary would be a letter from you to me, in the manner of the one for the savings account, stating that all correspondences, literary manuscripts and the like which had been or would be sent to me were sent as a gift, though you would of course feel free to have access to them at your convenience. Probably there should be an additional note, if this were done, included in your will; this Philip would be able to phrase. If however by "eventual disposal of letters" you mean where you would like them ultimately to go, that is a matter we could discuss in more detail when we see each other. In that case you would either by will or now have to present them directly to the ultimate recipient with the proviso, if you wished, that they remained in my hands or some one else's for some period of time or project. This is of course complicated, involves problems of separate insurance and the like. Assuming for the moment that you gave them to me, my idea would be to retain them or control of them so long as the people directly involved were still alive, and while there was still material to be managed for you and Hilda. Ultimately I had thought of them, along with my papers and Hilda's, as going to the Yale library where they would make an invaluable memorial not only to you both but also to the London literary scene in the 20th century. It will always be important for this to be represented sympathetically in the States, for the very reasons of friendship and understanding which we have both always worked for. With the Stein and Joyce papers, the Ango-American scene in Paris is already represented; and I have always hoped that some day Sylvia's papers could be obtained to complete the picture. As for New York, Yale has the Mabel Dodge papers, one

the Stieglitz papers, the Van Vechten papers, Muriel Draper's, and Hutchins Hapgoods. I am thinking of these as having value beyond the individuals concerned; and the value of any one set is increased by their interplay with all of the others. In individuals as well the collections are usefully interinvolved. Yale has the papers of Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, O'Neill, Wilder, MacLeish, Ficke, Teasdale, the Benets, Philip Barry, John Hershey, etc etc etc. As well as such artists as Lachaise, Demuth, Hartley, the Stettheimers and the like. This means that they will be both taken care of and used. But I should not think it wise that they should be given to Yale in fact until the initial uses of them had been made. Naturally this also involves the question of literary executorship, but that is something you should decide and include in your will. I would not divide this responsibility by having several executors, as for example one for England and one for the States. This only makes for trouble, overlapping, and complications. I feel strongly that Hilda should be specific on this point as well.

To finish the matter of the letters, I think now, with Walter's death that the wisest thing would be to send almost if not all of the letters now at Kenwin and Lowndes to go with the rest. Your letters to Walter should be among them; so should Hilda's to him, if she were willing.

As for the books, we discussed this at some length when you were last here, and I do not know that I have anything to add to what I said then when you told me you had left them to me. That is, that they would be publicly exhibited from time, continue to be made available for use by students, and in general kept a live rather than a dead collection. That we would try to bring together in the end as nearly as possible a complete collection of Beaumont and Fletcher in first and later editions so that there could be a kind of center for their study, and I suppose eventually some of the commoner books by other writers might be sold to provide funds for completing the B&F. In the end I suppose this should go to some institution. I quite honestly don't see any particular point in specifically giving any of the lesser books to Leslie. He is as likely to be absent from Northford as there, for some years to come, and the books are always available to him when he needs them. I can have another set of the cards made for him eventually if you like. At the moment his interests are more in documents, and it seems more important to me that I should remember the agreement we made to keep him from want and enable him to continue his researches if anything happens to you.

In the matter of the fund for the Gregories, there are of course an infinite number of ways this could be handled. (a) left as it is, on the basis that if things went to pot in Europe, the sums could be made up from American funds, either yours or, if anything happened to you, on the basis of the list of names we made up of those who were to be taken care of. That is simply one possibility, not necessarily the best. Or (b) the total amount could be transferred to an American account with the provision made for its distribution by some bank here. You may recall that I discussed this with my lawyer last year, and he could draw up whatever papers were necessary. This would not necessarily involve me in any way, unless the lawyer advised this as trustee. There might be certain advantages to the latter plan, in that the fluctuations within America would accord with the Gregories

own situation-- i.e. if the dollar inflates so would the value of
the investments. Also it would be easier to make provisions relevant
to the decease of either Gregory, unexpected demands upon them (for
surgery and the like) which at the discretion of trustees might make
it wiser to give a larger sum at a particular time, and the like. This
according to the lawyer is a fairly simple matter. Rene could do it,
but I myself would not go to him under past circumstances.

Does all this help?

The last point is the matter of my visit. When I wrote somewhat
discouraging the possibility, it was because of Walter's condition and
the demands made on you by him. I know you must have understood this.
Now of course things are different, and perhaps it is a particularly
opportune time for me to come. I should think early November would be
best. I could fly out on a Tuesday morning, spend that week and the
next, returning to New Haven to be here twelve days later on a Saturday.
Or possibly Sunday. The precise date I leave to you; my passport is
in order, and I can get innoculations etc. Naturally I want to see Hilda;
that would be a chief reason for coming. So that something would depend
on whether she was in Lugano still or had returned to Zurich. Otherwise
I leave to you and your fancy. There is much we could do; even late
we might persuade Hilda to take a couple of days in Venice with us; if
the boys could discover for me that the William Wetmore Story papers
were actually at the Keats Shelley Museum in Rome, this would be a
perfect time for me to see them, and give a good academic excuse for
my absence. Or we could have a few days in London. Or, if you feel
the urge for a little flip we could be silly and have fun a nd fly for
a couple of days to Istambul and see the renovated Haggia Sophia, done
since I was there in 1928, and, I am told, one of the wonders of the
world. What I would give, if we could persuade Hilda, as a favor to me,
to be giddy and fly with us. Then I would feel as though the three of
us had held hands in a recovery of the past trips; and how fair the
writing on the wall would seem now! I don't know how long it has been
since you were in Turkey, but four or five days there might be a wonder-
ful change and what we both need. But all this I leave to you, and if
you will set the date and where I am to meet you, I shall set things in
motion.

All love to you and Hilda as always,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

10 October 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I had waited, hoping for a letter before the weekend, with some answer to my query as to the precise date you wanted me to come. And where? I had thought perhaps to take off on November 2, to whatever spot you say. That I must leave to you. If I seem to have been wildish in suggestions, it is only in the hope to get you away from things as a kind of pick-me-up. That is at least one of my reasons for coming, as it turns out, though, as you know and suggest, it is also to see Hilda after so long a time. This will be a particularly good moment for her too, since she has finished her Helen poem, and is working over it, so that we can can go over it together.

As for Istanbul, that is better in fancy than in reality, though it is quite possible in fact to do; and I cannot recall your having been there yourself since the Haggia Sophia was restored. As for Rome, that would be wonderful if we could get Hilda to go with us. I have never been there, would like to meet Islay, and if he could simply ask at the Keats Shelley Museum whether they had the William Wetmore Story papers, that is all I need to know. If there is to be work done on the papers by anyone but myself (and of course it is happiest when I myself can do the job) I will have my assistant over the past three years do it for me. He will be in Rome on a Fullbright for the winter. Islay could probably find out simply by phoning them.

Everyone is busy here on the Chandara show, which opens soon, this week in fact. I will see that you and Islay get catalogues. It should be very good, and if I saw Islay I could take over any last moment queries or instructions.

I should also think we might cram in a day or two at Kenwin, or, staying nearby, go in. That is, if there are any papers or the like you wish to go over with me. And London seems to me perfectly possible on my way back, for as long as you want, just so that you don't use up your precious entries simply for my sake.

If I left on the 2nd, I should be back in New York either on the 13th or 14th in order to meet my Monday class. It would be fine if you came back to the States with me. That would give you another talk with the Wolves about plans, and possibly see Inghold as well.

The poem was splendid! Really splendid. Even Susan liked it, and poems do not mean so much to her as orchids do. As for "the wind takes with it on its journey", this strikes no historical bells of quotation in my mind, but strikes every response of excellent. By no means alter it.

Infinite love. I wait for your letter of instruction.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 October 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I had begun this letter to you yesterday morning, my first chance in several days, when Wallace Stevens suddenly came to town to see his exhibition of his writing which Yale put on at the library in honor of his 75th birthday; and by the time he had seen that - skittishly, as though he feared he would be caught by the public in the act -- and I had taken him to the house to see the glory of Susan's new greenhouse, of which I had spoken at his birthday parties, it was time for Susan and me to go to our first football game, and the day was over. A good day for a game, and a good game to fit the day. Yale beat Cornell 48 to 21, and its backs threw passes and cut thrugh the opposition line at will. There was much rejoicing at what looks like one of Yale's best teams for years.

Our cables and letters and have crossed and recrossed, and with you message this morning I begin to be able to frame my plans. I am only sorry if my trip has upset a trip to Pakistan which you deeply wanted to make, as I hope it will not upset the boys because you do not go. The Wolves will be glad you stay in Europe, for when I talked over things with them last Wednesday, they were eager for you to finish RUAN with enough time to run over it again with the same success all of your revisions have had, so that they can set it up and have the sheets for at least four months before the publication in the fall which they now want. The trouble (or rather a trouble) has been in the past that we have had to rush production so. Not in terms of the physical aspects of the book -- this they have done superbly, but there has been no time to brief the salesmen at the regular meetings, nor copies to go to buyers long enough ahead, or the chance even to try bookclubs. And now, if in addition to RUAN we continue with our plan to box the three English novels as a group (something you might well bear in mind in shaping your story) the extra time will be all the more necessary. Difficult as it is to believe, the plans for the winter meeting of their salesmen are already being made; and this is the time when the spring books are sold to them, a necessity before they can sell to others. So, being forced to make a decision, I agreed as your agent that we would bring RUAN out in the fall instead of the spring. You remember you once told me that you thought you were ready for a fall book, or I should not have taken the plunge. In any event, your trip to Pakistan, though certainly understandable, would have made difficulties with their plans for the fall; since you could not have hurried back this time. Islay told Wolff that he was happy that this time he could stay until he had done all the assignments and explored even for more. It will be well into December, I suspect, before they come back; and then there would be the question of your business in London and all the other duties that would come between you and your manuscript.

2

But we can discuss all this and more when I see you. For I am hoping of course that you will be in Rome to greet me, having said your farewells to the boys if they have left before I arrive, and that as we walk we can talk, and as we sit we can sift over the many details of one sort and another which have arisen. I shall go tomorrow and buy a round trip ticket to Rome, via Zurich on the return at least; and if Hilda is still in Lugano, I or we can go directly there from Rome, and thence to Zurich where I can pick up my plane again and receive later whatever rebate is to be rebated. I do not want to hurry Hilda back to Lugano, nor in any way discommode her plans any more than your own, but I do want to have a substantial visit with her, go over the Helen manuscript if that is possible, and I should also like to discuss with her the selections that might go into the 'erman edition like Pound's, and into an American edition to follow Helen if it is not put out so as to include Helen. Her books of course would be at Kugnaicht, which would make things a little easier; and so would her manuscripts and letters if she should care to go over those too. I go, then, on the 2nd; but will tell you the precise time of departure and arrival at Rome, I hope, in a letter tomorrow. I should be back in New Haven on the 13th, or 14th at the very latest. You will have to settle with Hilda whether I see her at Lugano or Zurich, but that can wait until we meet in Rome.

Can the boys make reservations for us in Rome? I leave the choice of hotel to them. And if they were willing to make my stay in Rome as pleasant as they made ours in Florence, I'd be immensely grateful if Kenneth could list a restaurant or two for particularly good cuisine, give us the addresses of one or two good antique shops, and recommend a place where Lucien would get Susan some material (modern but not moderne) for a cloth for the table in our living room. If you will tell me at what hotel we shall be staying, I will simply go there from the plane, and you will not have the disagreeable duty of sitting out any delays on my arrival. Once I have arrived at Rome, except for a few hours at the Keats Shelley, my time is yours. We can kiss the ring of the Pope or blow smoke, as you prefer.

I include the catalogue for the Gandhara show for you to see. It is excellently arranged, and everything shows off to best advantage. I believe Ingholt is sending one by air to Islay, and I am sending him six copies by air on the basis that they would be good to hand out to curators in Pakistan. They may never see them otherwise. If he wishes more to take with him, it would be worth a cable and I can send too. The check for Ingholt arrived, and I will be seeing him about it this week.

It promises to be a busy time between now and when I leave. I had the boy here for two days, who is to go to Washington to work in the archives for me. He catches on brilliantly, and I am most optimistic about the results. This week I shall try to set things in order; for next Tuesday I go to Cambridge to work on the Longfellow papers in search of Hawthorne references; on Saturday have to speak at the New England meeting of the College English Association; that is outside Boston, and I go from there Saturday to Gardner for my parents 55th

3

wedding anniversary on Sunday. Monday I have to teach, and that
night or Tuesday morning will go to New York for the plane, depending
on what time it leaves. Oh yes, the Saturday before going to Cambridge,
I have a lengthy meeting of another board, and on Sunday talk to the
foreign students of Yale on the topic: "Is America's tie on straight?"

I listened this morning to the national hookup with the
convezzatione on Wm Dean Howells, with Lyman Bryson and Margaret Mead,
the anthropologist) which we taped in New York last Wednesday. It was
a little stratling; there was a nasal edge to my voice which I should
not have recognized, and it sounded as Yankee as the dialogue of Howells'
characters.

I had a busy day in New York, and saw John Farrar about the
Freud book of Hilda's. He accepted Merrill's brief introduction, but
we will have to make new estimates since costs have gone up since the
time when it was done. I have written Merrill to get back the whole
manuscript which he still has, so that this can be in the works while
I am gone.

Then I saw the Wolves. 4973 copies of ROMAN WALL have been
sold so far. Far and away the most; OCTOBER is second, and SANDS,
curiously, has sold least. Bad judgment, I say, on the part of the
public.

After the Wolves I scurried up town and saw Pup and John for
a moment, both well, and picked up the two Hesses with which both Susan
and I are simply delighted. They are quite different yet make a
splendid pair. If one had to choose, it would be the snow scene, as
for yourself. But there is an amusing story about that which you must
remind me to tell you. Stevens saw them when he came to the house, and
enjoyed them immensely.

Envelope after envelope of letters have come in. I read them
and put them away. Better, I agree, to send them all over, and then new
ones as received. You will be too much on the move now. The family in
every corner will be calling you.

Cheers for the new version of the Tessin sugarcake, as you
once called it. I am glad to see these poems coming together in shape.
Who knows?

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

19 October 1954

Dearest Bryher:

The merest note, for it is ten o'clock at the
office, and I want to rush this to the post office for airmail
before I go home. No need to say what amount of work has kept
me at the office. All that seems evident is that we certainly
need some days together to make up for the lacunae of the past
months for both of us.

Yesterday I got my ticket, and all is in the
following order. I leave New York at 8 P.M. on the 2nd; arrive
at Zurich at 18:40 on the 3rd; and in Rome at 22:45 that night.
Horrible hours, but the only route via Zurich. I can of course
debark at Zurich if there is a good reason, but assuming that you
will be in Rome for farewells and to meet me, I should think better
you let me know what hotel we stay at, and I take bus to it, seeing
you in the morning, per your note for me at hotel desk, if it is
late. I do my jobs in Rome--say two days--and then, only if you
want, you can have engaged passage to Istambul; say two or three
days there, then back to Zurich, where I hope Hilda will have come
from Lugano, so that I can have three or four days with her to go
over things. Istambul of course is not at all necessary; it is
simply a whim to give you a diverting whirl. Only thing in its favor
is that I understand that one Van Nice, who used to work for me in
war, who has been in charge of restoration of Haggia Sophia, is
in its final fortnight or so in Turkey. Then job is done. But it
might be rare chance to have him show us what he has done. He had
expected to leave first of November, but someone who visited him a
few weeks ago said he thought he would be delayed a little beyond that.

I must impress however that the main things are, without
preference of order (a) to see you and go over business and RUAN; and
(b) to see Hilda, without making her think herself second-fiddle. I
shall be writing her tomorrow, and to you also, but simply wished to
warn you that all was in order, and that I hope we can be together in
Home. Will perhaps, without seeming to push, express hope that Hilda
will be in Zurich by beginning of week of Nov 8th, so that I can see
her there without taking the extra two days to Lugano. Besides, would
like a quick glance at Kusnacht, for atmosphere, and to be where her
papers are.

Must close and dash. Hope sniffles are better.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 October 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I feel suddenly the inadequacy of the mails. How
good it will seem simply to be able to talk with you, and hear the
answer before I speak again. I am only grieved that I should seem
so to have complicated things, for you and Hilda, and for the boys
as well. You are all remarkably patient. Yet I hope it will turn
out all right; I am sure it will.

You will have had my letter about my plane schedule,
and that seems more or less fixed. At present, assuming that you
might run down to say your goodbyes to the boys, I am assuming that
I will meet you at the Grand Hotel either late on the night of the
3rd, or if the plane is delayed, then after breakfast the next morning.
But if you simply cannot face Rome, I will join you shortly wherever
you are, or wherever Hilda is, or wherever you both are. I think of
Rome as my selfish wish; the rest depends on you two, for it is Hilda
and yourself whom I come to see--not ruins. As for Istambul, I suggested
that simply as a flip for you, to give you the kind of quick change and
lift you sometimes like. The Haggia Sophia seemed an accessible spot,
since one can fly out in less than a day. I should not worry about the
boys, if that indeed is the worry; for surely they understand both that
you must go to London, and that I could hardly reach Karachi before
turning back, if I am to see Hilda as I must see her, want to see her.
Nor as Islay wrote Wolff, does he want to linger even a moment in Karachi,
and Lahore would be quite out of the question. So let us leave Istambul,
unless you make up your mind beforehand, until I see you in Rome, when
we can decide. Or if you want to stay in Rome, bring your typewriter,
and work days on RUAN. I thought only that being together there would
give us luncheons and our evenings together, leaving more undivided time
for Hilda when we were with her. Like yourself, I suspect Hilda will
not want to come to Rome, and we ought not to pressure her. But if she
should like to flip down, deciding to do so at the last moment, this must
take precedence. What Hilda likes is not to have plans made for her, for
then she begins to tremble.

I wrote slay yesterday about six catalogues which I sent
him, and about his hope of having something from the American government
to clear him through the customs at Karachi. I will write again tonight
about some other matters, and ask him to have Kenneth change the reserva-
tion at the Grand from the 2nd to the 3rd.

I have a few ideas about the question of giving stocks
to Hotson and the others, which we can discuss when I come. Better that
way than trying to do it by mail. I quite agree that your financial
portfolio becomes rather a different thing, in terms of diversified

2

holdings, from the problem of these smaller, yet still substantial sums. As for Leslie's car, I shall try to see that this is in order by the time I leave. He is still in Maine with Mary.

My office will be a warehouse of papers by the time I get back, but the secretaries are good at such times of my absences, in bringing mail up to my office as soon as it arrives, and caching it safely there so that there is no danger. It does rather look as though an extra filing cabinet is indicated; and I will order when I come back and charge to the savings account. I agree with you that it is a good thing to get into firm order; it makes the disposition of Kenwin much easier. I presume you will want to do much the same task when you get back to London.

I am heartbroken to hear that Robert is drinking. Sometimes I am convinced that drink is one of the chief curses of the civilized world. I hope he will do something about it, but as the p.a.'s always say, nothing can be done without the will to have it done. We can talk about the matter of executorship; I should be surprised if under any circumstances it would be wise. As for funds for him, why not leave it, as for the present circumstances, -- one can always change the will as the situation changes--in terms of some trust fund with a reverting clause. Since Robert has no family, it would seem little point either to have it dissipated or simply pass on to his brother.

I was sorry in another way to hear that Eileen had died. Pup and John were full of the details of the Rosicrucian funeral which they had been to the night before, when I saw them last week in New York. Red roses waved to phonograph music. Alas, this is a second blow to Kenneth within too short a period.

I am working like mad to read dissertations, late papers, and get graduate students onto their assignments before I leave. Will drive to Cambridge, Mass., next Tuesday night to be there through Friday night; then to an English conference on Saturday, and on Sunday to Gardner for my parents' 55th wedding anniversary. If you need to reach me, Wednesday thru Friday, cable me at Hotel Commander, Cambridge Massachusetts.

Had a fine letter a few days ago from Horace, full of enthusiasm for his little book on Amy Lowell. We have asked him and Marya to come up for overnight, after my return.

Marianne appeared at the library this morning, unannounced, with her brother, to see the Stevens show. I did not see her, nor did Gallup, since she would not stay for lunch. But sent greetings all around.

Must close, and dash off note to slay.

All love as always. Hope the sniffles have vanished.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 November 1954

Dearest Bryher:

I still seem to be flying! My mind swirls with the
memory of all we saw and did; and glows with the warmth of the
happiness the trip gave me. Somehow I regret nothing, not even
the rain; and your suggestion of the day and a half in London made
a perfect ending. I felt limp when I arrived in New Haven early
Thursday afternoon --partly of course because the time was actually
for me five and a half hours later than my corrected watch read --,
but I managed to stagger to a funeral service I found scheduled for
five-thirty that evening, and made an early to-bed that night. Friday
I spent simply going over the huge stacks of accumulated mail in my
office, and meeting a line of students who seemed to have been waiting
ever since I left, and had an even better sleep that night--so that,
today, Sunday, I feel all of the benefits of the change I had, and am
ready for my classes tomorrow.

I called Pup Friday morning, and sent love, finding all
well with them; and we plan a reunion when I can give length to the
account of our flying carpet.

The trip back was uneventful, though a little prolonged
by bad weather, so that we stopped both at Shannon and at "ander en route.
I took your advice at Shannon and bought some handkerchiefs, and went
beyond your advice and bought a couple of quarts of "apoleon brandy for
a winter's entertainment. I even called friends in Dublin by phone, when
I found the toll was only 1/9; and so could bring back news of them as
well. There was absolutely no difficulty with the customs going out of
London, and they were no doubt impressed by the fact that I had to pay
twenty English punds for excess baggage. But it was worth it to get the
fragiles back so easily, and in New York they did not even look through
my luggage, for more than a quite cursory glance at my aluminum suitcase.
Gander was of course only a brief stop, but you would not have liked the
four or five inches of crystal snow that covered the ground. I spent most
of the flight reading the Turkey book, which I found most intriguing and
for which I was most grateful. I hope you will take a look at it yourself.

Susan was delighted with all her presents, especially her
shawl from you. The Sparks present she insists on keeping unopened until
Christmas and her 50th-birthday. She likes to enjoy the anticipation!
But the belt I bought her fitted perfectly; she liked the umbrella; did an
arrangement of roses in the little Italian modern vase I got in Rome; and
has been nibbling at her liqueur chocolates from Zurich airport. The
brocade sent her into ecstasies, though she thinks it too elegant for
our living room --and perhaps she is right; so it is being settled by her
making an evening short coat for herself from it, which is perfectly all

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

23 November 1954

Dearest Bryher:

It was startling to hear by radio, and then read in the
papers, that the bazaar we visited in Istanbul had gone up in flame. I
remember thinking, as we wound our way around corners, with no silk thread
to follow save Warwood's memory, what a fire would be like if it ever
started amongst the furniture, mattresses, and other flammables which
crowded every passageway. Though you must sometimes have thought the
bazaars there, or anywhere, were my first interest, these were not as
irreplaceable as some other sites would have been. Yet I am glad enough
to have seen them before the fire, and the pleasure which the spoils from
our visit gave would have been enough in itself to repay the visit.

Then there was the news of the dreadful storms at sea by
Britain, and I was glad this time that you were not on the Scillies. It
must have been bad enough even in London, and I hope you and Elsie kept
to your rooms, and while studied English, you worked on your notes for
RUAN.

As for myself, I've tugged away at the mass of the things
which accumulated while I was gone, and have fought off a bug which has
made me feel, if not like the wrath of God, then like his displeasure at
least. After four or five days, it begins to pass; and I should be fine
by tomorrow when I meet my class again.

Thanksgiving was pleasant. We went to Mrs.ennett's, so
Susan did not have to prepare the feast; and there was the usual gathering
of that clan. Lizzie had a friend from New York, and little Susan came up
Wednesday night, and has stayed the weekend, so we have had a good visit from
her: our first since we left the shore. She has been busy with her singing
group in New York, has kept on with her analysis, and seems to be in good
fettle.

Leslie came in on Tuesday to see me. I had talked to him on
the phone on Sunday, and he had said he did not think they should get a car
because of the short time they would be here; but when he came I laid down
the law that he must -- for various sensible reasons -- and I was glad I had.
For no sooner said, than I saw he wanted one all along; and now he is busily
searching for his heart's desire: a small Plymouth station wagon, preferably
recent second-hand; though I told him if there were none available, or likely
to be, that he had better get a new one. I really put it on the basis of
Mary, and this was what turned the trick. He seems to be in excellent form,
and already laying plans for his next volume.

Ingholt brought me a volume with some data on the Kahrie Djami,
which I shall copy. "He also suggested, if the boys are still in Pakistan and

paradoxical, and one feels completely helpless.

Meanwhile, Stanley Williams, the professor of American Literature, grows worse. His leukemia became complicated through cortisone with the development of diabetes; and he is now back at the hospital with pneumonia. It is as though my pedagogical father were dying at the same moment as my blood father; and perhaps there is something appropriately appropriate about it all.

But I should not go on in this manner. Share my love with Hilda.

26 January 1956

Dearest Bryher:

The days have gone by, with things much as they were.
My father lies, more or less constantly unconscious, but his body
refuses to cry quits, as though responsive to his words when he said,
"I don't want to die." I did go up to see him last Saturday, spending
the morning and lunch with my mother, and then taking her to the
hospital in the afternoon. He had one of his rare moments when his
eyes were open, as I came in, and he motioned me feebly with one hand
to go to the other side of their bed where he could watch me with
unfocussed eyes which seemed to be making a desperate effort to establish
just who this not unfamiliar figure was. My voice, unfortunately, broke
a little as I tried to talk to him to add the distinction of my voice
to the indistinction of my body; but in a few moments he drifted off
into a half sleep again. I stood there by the bed, watching him, for
an hour; and as he relaxed he seemed almost young again and full-faced
in his repose. At last his eyes opened, and this time I could speak in
my natural voice to him, not saying much except that I had come, while
the nurse doubled the identification by speaking close to him. He smiled,
and when the nurse said, "he's come from a long way," he tried mumbling to
say something to her, and watching me his face had the look almost of
a baby who with an overwhelming grin is pleased that someone familiar
is near. The nurse pointed out my mother, and looking at her he continued
his smile, and then as it were catching us both in a kind of benediction
of approval he drifted off into his sleep again. I felt extraordinarily
tender toward him in his helplessness, as he must often have felt toward
me as a child when I had my illnesses. Perhaps it was a kind of rounding
of the circle; at any rate I was immeasurably grateful for having gone
at last, for although the memory would not have stayed with him even for
seconds, I shall not forget it easily.

He slips farther down the grade each day, although he
suffers no pain, one feels; and it is rather wonderful that his body
still endures. Sunday night they thought he had died; Monday and Tuesday
he did not open his eyes, nor take food except for the intravenous feed-
ings, his breath spasmodic and faltering. But yesterday he seemed to
have settled into a new level, his breath regular, though he is still not
conscious.

So it goes. It is hard on my mother, but she takes it
bravely, and although she knows it is his end, she treats each moment of
regained ease as though it were a gain. I hold myself ready to go back
at any moment's notice, but meanwhile give my lectures, keep my appoint-
ments, and try to focus on my work.

I have not written because the bulletins are meaningless.
But my desk which had become piled high with chores which I never seemed
to accomplish has, yesterday and today, been attacked and begins to assume
some greater neatness. I was grateful to receive the corrections to
*Beowulf* and have sent the manuscript over to the male Wolf, with your
query about the title. I shall be anxious to know what he thinks. Oddly,

I do not fear quite the ignorance which Petrie mentions, and, as you
will see, from the jacket blurbs which I had long since composed and
have sent, I have taken care to explicate the title as well as the book
for those who need reminding. Perhaps my lessened apprehension is due
to the fact that the standard introductory course in English for fresh-
men in American colleges usually is, like the title of the most and im-
mensely popular textbook, called "From Beowulf to Hardy." I am not of
course at all adamant about retaining it, only I cannot forget that
neither one of the wolves ever questioned it at all.

You ask me which book Collins should do next. I should think
SANDS, though they may wish an alternative title if they fear some of the
relationships in the book. If they really don't like it, I suspect it
is because of the ending; but that is something which I know you would
not want to change. They could not help thinking the sheer equality of the
writing, which is your very best. But I do know, to repeat myself, that
the final pages, unqualified by comment, do not come across to the public
as they do to me.

I will write to Marya, and get the matter in hand about the
selections from Avon, which is better that I do, so that I can have a
proper record. Hilda can, if she wants, simply drop her a note saying
that she understands that I have, as I will have done before her letter
could reach New York, written to her about it. I shall get the letter
off tomorrow morning.

In all the stress of the moment, I have forgotten to tell you
that the young wife who lives next to Sue in New York, did after all, as
it turns out after Sue's nudging inquiry, have her analyst in New Haven
with whom she continues to have sessions.

I shall have forgotten much in this, but will write again within
a few days. Your letters and Hilda's mean much.

28 Jan 1956

Dearest Bryher:

A Saturday afternoon letter, while I work away at
my desk -- writing to you or to Hilda is like a Saipa interval. The
last fortnight or so I seem to have accomplished a little less than
usual, which is perhaps not surprising. But what a fantastic variety
of things there are to do, and one has to shift one's mind quickly
from one to another.

My nightly telephone calls to my mother get little
variety of answer, save that on the rare occasions when he opens his
eyes they no longer respond to any object waved before them, and he
takes no nourishment except intraveinously. But his heart still
pumps on. I suppose this is the way men survive disasters in mines,
buried in debris but the body carrying on like a good soldier.

Susan and I will go up to Gardner tomorrow, as I did
last week. I should certainly have thought then not to have been able
to do it again.

We have both enjoyed your stories. I long for a continental
version of "Menageries." For posterity, anyhow; or we can publish it under
the nom de plume of REHYRB.

Not a peep yet from the New World people about THE GATE.
These things always take ages.

Tell Hilda I have written Marya.

Yesterday was very much of a Bryher day. In the morning,
Leslie came in at eleven and stayed until 12.30; he, full of what are really
exciting conclusions, from putting evidence together, about the playhouse at
St. Paul's. I think he has something; and, of course, it's in the round. But
who can put 7 and 3 together, as he can, not to mention 2 and 2. I have
suggested that he start fresh with the records of St. Paul's when he goes
over in March, since he may now be able to sense significances he would not
have been looking for before this. "We also went over his finances a little,
and I suggested that he not keep quite so much in savings accounts (at low
interest), but buy a few more mutual shares of one sort or another. Did you
know that Leslie's father was still alive, and, he said, chiefly supported
by him? This is a drain. Then he went over, pretty much line by line, the
BBC broadcast of the program based on his 12th Night book. A very good job,
I believe. He is making a copy for you to read.

After lunch who should appear the door but Frank Glynn, whom
Lethbridge had you look up. He wanted to talk, and so we talked Indians; I
being at once "certified" as it were, because of the tomahawk stone which
Susan's father gave me and I keep on my desk. It was a kind of secret signal
that made possible the pronoun "us." He had little to report, except that a
dig in an upper corner of the island of Manhattan had uncovered some shards
with designs and a glaze which tied in with this New Hampshire sword of his.
He is triumphant!

2

I am terribly worried by Doris's letters and your report, and am most anxious to know what the surgery reveals. I fear the ultimate worst, but am mightily thankful that the farm matters increasingly seem to be taken care of and tidied up. I should not want to trust John altogether on such matters; she is far more experienced and level-headed.

Had intended asking you if you wanted me to get you the Prescott volume, but of course now you have it from him. Am not surprised he did not officially dedicate it; it would have meant reviewing you became impossible. Otherwise have seen very little in the way of publications that seems likely to interest you. How was the biography of Adams, by the way? Should I read? I used to open my course with the *Autobiography*.

I don't think I thanked you properly for the Burgess-Maclean volume put out by the *Daily Express*. Hope you ordered one for yourself. Quite unexpectedly it was very well done, I thought; at least it told a coherent story. The whole thing becomes retrospectively, more and more shocking.

Three envelopes of your letters came yesterday. I become quite involved. Mary Hotson's letters are like a geyser of joy, and I was really moved by the picture of the two of them alone together singing folk songs and carols, and then going out a *deux* to sing them to the two old ladies and the Italian peasant woman. They are originals, in the 18th century sense of the word. Agnes seems a little subdued, and I wonder if she is not tired of Pat; it's a little like having found a cute kitten to cuddle, which as it grows up turns out to be only an alley cat. Do let me know when her Ralegh note appears; I'll look for it in the library. Margery Hicks is a real discovery; she writes with the sharp grace of the birds she watches. I do think she could do a book which would be charming. All she has to do is to be natural, and let a year of seasons serve as her structure. And how fine it is that Rose Odle is so happy with her Russians. Really, there has not been this tone in her letters for years. You were inspired when you helped her to go. Marianne's letter to Hilda was supremely mandarin; only she can manage a sincere convolution. I do like getting the letters this way; it's a little like reaching out inside your fingers. And of course it does make the filing simpler.

I stopped at that point and called my mother. She reports no change that anyone can notice, though he moves almost not at all now.

All love to you both

5 February 1956

Dearest Bryher:

I should have driven to Gardner today -- things still being exactly as they were, if we had not had an ice storm last night, and the Automobile Club reported to me that the speed limits on the highways was 25 mph, and I feared that it would be worse when I left that and headed over the hills as we did when you went. But at least it gives me an extra day in the office, though I should have liked to have had lunch with my mother and had a little visit with her. But I do call each evening, and so keep in touch.

I was delighted with your long first letter of February, and one from Hilda came in the following mail, both having been preceded by the card with its frost-bitten squeal. What incredible cold you have been having everywhere. At least I'm glad you're not in England. At least the Swiss keep warm in hotels!

You were kind to offer to help with the expenses at home. They will manage, but as my mother exclaimed: "What do "poor" people do!" It gives her a great pleasure and a consolation, too, that they can swing it. However, I shall keep it in mind; and if I get inklings of difficulty will step into the lurch.

Did I write you, by the way, that Ralph Hodgson had sent me for New Year's one of his rippered books? It was a red-leather bound copy of Herrick, an early 19th century edition of the kind he likes, only a little more elegant perhaps than some of his are. I was deeply touched. And did you get one of their Christmas cards, with its odd printed greeting: "Ralph Hodgson and Aurelia Hodgson, always remembered."

Most cryptic, I thought, and it seemed to signify a kind of Grand Canyon between themselves and the past, which might toruble me if I did not have the picture of him with his albums, his suitcases of books, and his layers of waistcoats and sweaters.

Your plans for the next few weeks sound eminently sensible to me. Hilda herself writes of thinking to go back to Zurich in March, and if Heydt will drop in, and she can find some place near Brunner, but not in it, then this is certainly worth trying. As you say, she can scuttle over to the storeroom, and be, as it were, observable. Yes, this is certainly worth trying. I do remember the Sonne. And when I write Heydt, I shall urge him to join us in trying to persuade her to come to the States in the fall. I shall not be happy until Prutting has had a chance to see her. I suspect a proper diet of vitamins might make all the difference.

3 February 1956

Dear Miss Toklas:

Such fun in the classroom today! I think Gertrude would
have liked it, and I hope you will; that is why I write you immediately
on this February 3rd.

This is the week when, by coincidence, I have been lecturing
on her to my undergraduate class. Because I wanted three lectures instead of
the usual two, I announced on Monday that of course we must meet Friday: it
was her birthday! "In the month of February," I said, quoting her, "were
born Washington, Lincoln and I." And I explained how it was that since we
cannot know anything except what we have experienced, why then of course one
had to be one's own hero. And why, although we could inherit Washington for
the 18th-century, and Lincoln for the 19th, a 20th-century writer like Gertrude
who did try to write truly and with contemporaneity had to be as revolutionary
for her time as they had been for theirs.

The night before my Wednesday's lecture, I read in the local
newspaper:

"Governor Abraham A. Ribicoff has endorsed the designation of February as American History Month by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The governor noting the birthdays of both Lincoln and Washington fall during the month, called February 'an appropriate time in which to mark American History month and to encourage a study of the rich heritage of America.'"

So to remind the Class of Friday's meeting, I read it to the students the next
day, pointing out that the governor had forgotten to include her as a February
heritage. There was a round of applause to remedy the omission.

Then this morning I stood on the platform, ready to begin my
lecture on "Melanctha," when the 275 students in the class suddenly began to
sing:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Gertrude,
Happy birthday to you!

I couldn't help but be pleased, because it was so warmly done, and they got such
a kick out of it, and weren't rude, and then did settle down to listen. And
they listened until, some ten minutes later, the doors at the back of the hall
opened and six young men, solemnly dressed in dark gray flannel suits, came
marching down the long aisle, holding high a huge birthday cake with a single
burning candle on it, and three deep crimson roses in confectionary sugar (for
a rose is a rose is a rose), and there were frosting letters which spelled out
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY GERTRUDE." They brought the cake up on the platform; I blew
out the candle as gallantly as though it had been my party, and put the cake
beside me on the lectern; and they marched down, and out of the hall (so they
quickly crept into the balcony, where the auditors sit, so they could hear the

rest of the lecture as best I could give it under the circumstances.) The
class as a whole hadn't expected it any more than I had, and they liked the
idea as much as I did, and they liked "Melanctha" too, which is as it should
be. I let the class out five minutes early, and someone had a huge jack-knife,
and we cut up, and though not all of the 275 got a piece, a lot of them did
and all of them had something to remember.

I had my piece of cake and ate it too, but I saved the
candle for you, and enclose it in this letter. I hope it comes safely. Light
it and laugh!

13 February 1956

Dearest Bryher:

Sad news for me this morning. My mother called on the phone to say that my father had had a cerebral hemorrhage yesterday, and is now more or less unconscious in the hospital, does not really do more than flicker his eyelids, and nod a yes or no to his nurses, not recognizing anyone. She thought he did identify her for a moment before he was taken to the hospital, and she thinks she heard him say, "It's come at last!" She is really most brave about it. I talked to my brother later on the phone, but of course during the first forty-eight hours there isn't much that can be determined one way or the other. I will keep in touch by phone, but probably won't go up for a few days or until things are clarified a little. I noticed how much he had failed when we went up with you, and he seemed somewhat worse when we were at the wedding in Cambridge. How glad I am, however, that you could have met him; your visit pleased them both so much.

All in all the last few days have been filled with unfortunate news. Two days ago I heard that a first cousin, my father's nephew, had gone off from his family to Haiti and slit his wrists. He had become an alcoholic, though of course the troubles must be much more basic. He wasn't successful in his attempt, except for getting in the newspapers, and has been flown back to the States, where he is now in a hospital. As an ex army major, the army will take him over. Actually they do good work psychiatrically, and one only hopes that the attempt (a serious one) will prove to be a kind of catharsis.

And yesterday a brother-in-law on Susan's side called from Hartford to say that he was going to have to fly over to Zurich to see his Aunt Mary Foote (80-ish and a whilon good painter and intimate of Ertrude Teings and Mabel Dodge's, about whom I may have told you, since she was for so many years an amanuensis of Jung's.) Her Swiss doctor says that she is feeble-minded, or more or less so, and he must find her a companion or place to say. I suggested Brunner, if he gets in a jamb, and told him to use my name. I figured that Father Brunner might know of places or persons, even if the clinic doesn't seem to be the right place. I don't think the aunt is batty; simply that she doesn't eat properly, wanders around some, and can't handle her accounts. I would have written Brunner myself, but can't remember his name; and you told me that Heydt was away just now. You might drop Brunner a note and recall me to his memory, and say that a William Foote from Hartford might get in touch. Of course Foote doesn't really know what the situation is, and won't until he gets there. He might not have to call on Brunner at all. Her doctor is a Dr. Immerle (if I have the name right.)

The weather has been absolutely fiendish all week, pouring down rain from one day's end to another. It all seems vastly appropriate.

Actually of course I could hardly have written Heydt; in view of what you told me I feel rather angry at him for what does seem to be a remarkable negligence in reference to professional ethics. Walter knew quite well what circumstances demand, and the historical experience which led to the decorum he obeyed. Heydt sent me an elaborate Christmas

2

card. What do you and Hilda think? Should I answer it, just to keep things smooth on the surface; or should I ignore it? One rather tends toward the polite note of acknowledgement, as a kind of insurance policy against what one never does know precisely.

I was distressed that George Flank was so exhausted by his trip; but I do think the change will be a kind of vitamin pill for him. Do persuade him to stay a little longer. He is one person I trust not to exhaust Hilda! Quite the contrary! And I only wish I were there to fill the four sides of a table at Saipa.

Your various news of Robert is of course distressing, though you have been preparing me for this for some time. And I have noticed a certain desperation which tones his letters. It is not tragic, I suppose, in any classical sense, for there is nothing kingly about it, and all he drags down with him is the promise of what he might have been. But tragic or not, it is an infinitely sad situation; and one trebles for the future.

This is not really a letter, I simply wanted you to know about my father. Your visit made you a part of Gardner too.

With all love to you and Hilda, and my warmest greetings to George Flank if he is still with you.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

13 February 1956

Dearest Bryher:

No, not the letter I owe you. It is late, and I must get back to the house. I got held up at dinner, which I ate late, and I must be sure the house is nicely picked up against Susan's return from Florida tomorrow. I won't even try to answer the letters which have been so welcome, but save that until a day or so when I can write.

This is especially to quote a letter in today's mail from Victoria McAlmon:

"I am caring for the correspondence of my late brother, Robert Menzies McAlmon, who passed away in his Desert Hot Springs home on February 2. He died of pneumonia. He was fraud and tragically ill from tuberculosis. His one remaining lung was mortally infected and there was no hope of recovery. It is a very sad end to his life.

"I have sent a note to the Saturday "review of his demise hoping that this magazine will briefly state the fact. I know of no other way to reach some people who will be interested. I have his address book but I know one of the persons therein died recently.

"One of his relatives has a ring Bob was given by Maclean years ago & I found in his papers --which I have not finished looking over -- a reference to this Englishman.

"Would you be willing to lend me the Daily Express book you wrote of to my brother? I would need to keep it about a month before returning it. I shall be busy with his papers for a time."

So that chapter is ended! I have written her -- she asked who had bought his Joyceana -- saying how I had known him, and that I did have his papers, and that I hoped I could buy whatever was still there, and that I would write various people (including Hilda and yourself--tho I did not go into details about this-- and suggested that I could perhaps get Harvey Breit to put a note in his column in the Sunday Times book section, and that she or I might write to the Paris Tribune which his friends there might see.

All this about Burgess and Maclean in the papers. Too bad Bobby couldn't know that! he was always so interested. Sheer rot, of course, that they weren't espions. But just what the Russians think they can effect by bringing them out as this moment. But then, you and I always agreed that the Russian way of thinking simply cannot meet at conference table with the West.

Such a nice note from Alice Toklas written on the 6th, after getting the letter, the copy of which I sent you. "You gave Gertrude a perfect birthday -- one in every detail she would have chosen. As I read your letter just now, I cried the nearest to happy tears I've shed these many years. Then you wrote that you had sent me the candle and indeed there it

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 H G S
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN • CONN

was in the envelope quite flattened--but having warmed it, it is once more
a perfect little birthday xandle and tonight at midnight it will be lighted
for 'örtwüde from you and your class. To you and your students I send my
warm and grateful thanks. There are three anniversaries for which light
candles--Christmas, the 3rd February and the 27th July."

She went on: "The John Schaffners came to see me on their way home from
Switzerland in early autumn. Perdita I'd not seen since you brought her here
with Sylvia (?) one evening. It was a pleasure to meet her husband and to
see how very happy they were."

I drove to Garber on Sunday -- how grateful I am to you for the
car which takes me there so easily -- and had lunch with my mother, and then
went to the hospital to see my father briefly. His heart pumps steadily as
ever, but I did see a change for him in his general appearance. The end
certainly can not be far off. My mother seems very tired; I notice that she
finds it hard to lift a cup of tea steadily to her lips now.

Prof. Williams, the senior American literature man died two Saturdays ago, and last Tuesday I had to be a pall-bearer. It is all strange. In life it was like Pope's Atticus -- no one near the throne. Now I get letters of condolence, have been asked to go over his papers, and I suppose get a book out in his honor.

It was sad to learn about Voules. It will be a blow to Robert
certainly, and a touch of melancholy for everyone.

A telephone call late this afternoon said that one of my instructors
in American Studies had come down with infectious hepatitis. That means two
months or so away from classes. Tonight I do not really feel able to cope,
but tomorrow will no doubt be a fine clear midwinter-spring day.

All love to you both. I shall be sending additional winged arrows
to you two all day tomorrow.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 February 1956

Dearest Bryher:

It is snowing again, but for you and Hilda we feel like sending winterhilfe. What an incredible experience it must be! But how happy I am that Hilda doesn't have to trudge across the paths to her meals. Saipa is another matter; it needn't be done, unless one wants to, and then only at chosen moments. And how very glad I am that you can be at the Bristol at this particular time: for Hilda's sake, and for your own too.

The first batch of corrections for Beowulf have come in. I mean the first three batches. I suspect the copy has already gone to the printer, but I can catch them in the galleys. So keep on with them until you've finished. But what I actually wish you'd do for me, to be tucked away against the "Portrait Gallery", is which your portrait of Uncle Norman already hangs, is the sketch of Adrienne. Sylvia has just sent me the magazine issue in her homage, which will set your mind going. But remember, what I want is the direct rendering: the little gestures and mannerisms. This is different from the art of invention which fiction requires, and which is spring writing for you. Winter writing is the way we would talk. Don't you see, I want to know Adrienne as I never had the chance to know her except in glimpses. Don't you see that the 'alentines and Nikki's ought to look at her picture. I have a hunch that this is what your cup of tea is at the moment; and maybe hunches can't be proved right or wrong until they've been tried.

Thank you for liking the little note on John Gould Fletcher. I had a nice letter about it from a librarian on the west coast who had chanced to read it. Did you see the review of the Aquare Dollar Series I did for Shenandoah? I sent Hilda a copy, hoping she'd pass it on to you.

The news from Gardner still remains the same; I only hope that medicine will not prove too triumphant in maintaining this limbo in which he now lies. If he were a younger man, the clot might dissolve and the brain and nervous system rebuild themselves; I should doubt however that he still had that recuperative power. What it does seem to indicate is that will power is not altogether a matter of the reason, but physiologically inherent in some people. I think I wrote you that I drove up again on Sunday, and went to the hospital. He opened his eyes, but they looked without seeing anything.

No letters from Doris in the last two batches; I hope things go a little better for her. In reference to Close-up woodcuts, I feel sure that the Eastman Museum in Rochester would accept them, but I am not sure they could pay cost of shipping by slow freight. Do you want me to take up the matter with them, and offer to pay them what it costs to ship. Thus they could, if sent to them, enter the country duty-free.

The first volume of the Tolkien arrived yesterday. Susan is delighted; so I am too, but I shall have to wait a bit before I can get to

3

About the matter of the Psychoanalytical Journal, I should say: yes, sell it. And I think to the secretary, for this reason. Then it will be sure to go either to a practitioner or to a library where it will do maximum good. Yale of course has it. Maggs might get you a little more, but you would not have the satisfaction of knowing that it would be as well used. This is not quite London Library's pound of oolong.

Delighted that the valentines both arrived safely and in time. I rather dreaded the prospect of repeating the Christmas letter fiasco or unbalance. A scratch behind the ears and a pat on the rump went with them. Let it all be a substitute for Shrove monkey!

Both girls are to be home this weekend. Today is Lizzie's birthday, so she seems to have a touch of the flu. Sunday they plan a party for us as for Tuesday, which is our 15th weddings anniversary. This is really very nice of them: the details are all to be a secret which we will learn on our return from the Hotsons. I shall report in detail. Little Susan's wedding appears to be set for the 21st April. There will be much scurrying.

I shall think of you expressing your distain for the snow in the best Fido fashion.

All love and dog food.

Norman

Oh yes! I have repeatedly forgotten to return the summer house check. Gather if you have long since cancelled this, as we discussed - but your financial friend may prefer the assurance of leaving it up to him.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

1 March.

Dearest Bryher:

Your letters have been a wonderful comfort, and I am
infinitely chagrined at having let so long a time pass since I last
wrote you. But you will understand.

Now there is so much to write about, that one wonders
whether it will be possible to get it all into one letter. But then,
we are not confined to one letter, nor have we ever been.

I am so sorry about the burst pipes at Kenwin, yet in
a way I am glad that it happened at a moment when perhaps you needed
to be torn away from Hilda and the Bristol for an interval which could
be your own. I do see the problem without quite being able to suggest
the proper remedy. Die Sonne looks like the best immediate solace, and
there can be no harm in trying. But I suspect Hilda's rapport with
Erich is really gone in anything like its old sense. And do not be
surprised if he does not respond to his responsibility as you and I
might wish he would. That rather hidden objective of his has been
taken from the map of his future; he did not start with it in mind,
but eventually it became a false grail of security and power: a grail
without a lance, really, for he was born a fisher king who doesn't even
know how to murmur shantih. I should think Die Sonne, then, with the
summer at the Bristol once more, and, we shall pray, that trip to the
States in the fall which we both so much want. I keep mentioning it,
stressing the incognito aspects of the visit. Perhaps we can build it
up on the basis of her doing it for other reasons than herself.

I went in to New York on Sunday, since Helen is back from
her trip, and because Mrs Fletcher was about to leave for Arkansas again
after a period there while she wrote a child's life of Dr Schweitzer. Too
bad: two other children's books on him have already appeared, but none
by anyone who has actually been to Ambarie and knows Schweitzer. Yet one
feels the probable effect on sales. I visited with her from eleven until
one, when she had another luncheon engagement, and then went to Washington
Square to the wolves' den. They seemed fine, and I spent until four with
them, doing business through lunch and afterwards.

"We went over Hilda's book, and I managed to persuade Kurt
not to remove one rather mystic (and, I must admit, somewhat cloudy)
chapter on "time", and also managed to retain the text of Goethe's "Kennst
du das Land," which he had thought too trite by now to include as an
epilogue. Fortunately Helen saw the point of keeping it in, which is one
reason I had not wanted to talk until her return. But both of them want
to eliminate Merrill's introduction, which I rather agree with, but shudder
at the thought of explaining to him. My idea, to which they agree, is that
we will do a special pamphlet on the book for circulation in p.a. circles,
and print his statements in that. Kurt will try to get permission for the
letters, dealing with the British publishers directly, and assuring them and

2

Jones that if an edition of the letters as a whole is planned, they
can have the texts of any or all of them. They do want a new title,
but with the name of Freud in it. I suggest "*A* tribute to Freud," (despite
"Tribute to Angels,") or "Homage to Freud," without being too happy about
either. "Writing on the Wall" is fine, but difficult for cataloguers or
those who can't remember anything except that there was some book written
by, I think it was, a poet, some lady, do you know what the book is? I wanted
it for my brother who is an analyst. They want to bring it out in a nice
modern way, and are not keen on including any pictures (but don't mention
this to Hilda, until I see how it comes out). I have written her the rest.
Do you have an visions of a good title, yourself?

Islay had sent on to me Ingholt's letter from Pakistan, and I am
sorry about the misunderstanding which his mention of photographs made. He
assumed that you all knew about his project, quite separate from the book,
of collecting every possible picturing of Gandharan art, and he has been
soliciting American collectors and museums, and having illustrations copied,
all for his own files. It helps him in his research, especially in connect-
ion with the transmission of styles in which he is so interested. After all,
the layout of the book, as you forgot, has already been made, and the plates
are being prepared. If by any chance he used any of these, it would only
be within his introduction. The plates proper will all be by Islay. There
seems also to be some misunderstanding about the Pakistan subsidy, for
Islay was fearful at giving up his copyright to their government. But that
isn't what they meant at all. What they wanted to know was whether the
Pakistan government could buy an unusually large number of copies for
distribution, getting them at the discount which goes to dealers. You can
see that it is to their advantage to have it widely distributed within
Pakistan, to help effect the same goal that we want. All they would be is
to become a substantial purchaser, and this would be an immense help both
in paying for the book or perhaps even increasing a little the number of
copies we would print. And on each copy they bought, Islay would receive
the usual royalty. Islay objects too to the title that Kurt and I, not
Ingholt, had given to the book: "Gandharan Sculpture in Pakistan Museums."
He wants either "Gandharan Sculpture in Pakistan" (not strictly correct,
since some plates are of other forms than sculpture, viz coins, jewelry),
or "The Art of Gandhara in Pakistan." But we can reluctantly do on this
as he wants. Our reason for not taking the second was that there are no
photographs of architecture, sites, and the like; and as a scientific book
we wished it to be as precisely titled as possible. He says that the
inclusion of Gait's things rules out Museums. I may suggest to him, the
substitution of "Collections" for "Museums." But I shall be writing him
tomorrow on all this, so why not wait until he lets you know he has heard
from me.

You can see that my hours with the Wolves were filled, especially
because the raison d'etre of my visit was to go over Beowulf with them. I
took down one of the copies of your changes, and Helen will alter the ms
before it goes to the printer. I had checked beforehand in my copy.
The question of a title came up, and I had meanwhile re-read the manuscript,
trying to let my unc work for a solution. "The Warming Pan" is out, blitzed
out by the heat of the bombing. "Bulldog," never quite satisfied me. We
went over it carefully, while Helen murmured that it had never occurred to
her that "Beowulf" was not an inevitable title for the book. And in the
end we left it as that. When Collins does it, they can try to find another
solution if they want. I do not really fear that *your* audience will be
perplexed, despite Petrie's wail. Anyhow it is all explained on the jacket

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for the sake of the ignorant. By the way, Helen preferred to leave out the fact that Beowulf had appeared in French, not to hide it but simply not to stress it, so I agreed and the blurb matter will be rewritten. And I changed, you will be glad to know, the reference to Close-Up so that only a connexion is indicated. Our plan for the design is to have some artist draw a plaster bulldog, which will also help to clarify matters for them as ain't larned.

The second section of Hilda's Helen should go out to her early next week. I have written her, to say that I didn't include any query sheet, simply noting the questions on one of the two copies.

And, off yes, I suddenly realize that we haven't exchanged any contract between us on Beowulf, since include an original and a copy herewith, and with it the usual check. Could you have the contract signed with two witnesses, and return one copy to me for my files. And don't forget to cash the check.

I am not altogether surprised that Hodgson did not write you directly to thank for his Christmas check. "We did write me, or rather gave an equivalent with his gift of the old book, as he had done for you when you were there. You see it in this way with him: he can't really pretend any longer that it's an award." But he doesn't want to spoil a friendship which has come to mean to him so much as yours does by thinking of you as a benefactress. If you would only write him a nice letter, about the winter snow, the burst pipe, and the like, he would write you about the sunflower stalk in the kitchen, and the bull terriers that ramp in his memory. On the 18th I had a little note from him which was signed "R.H.", a kind of midway gesture. I had sent him a copy of the Shakespeare lectures. "That was uncommonly kind of you though I did not want to put you to any trouble or to take up your time in any way. But thanks very much. I'll turn to Cleopatra at the end of this week, when I shall have concluded *A Little Boy in the Sixties*, by George Sturt - to my taste, one of the most admirable of modern English writers; I expect you know all about him - then I'll follow your essay with Master Prouty's and the others. I am rather in the mood for such works, as I have been reading in the Sunday Times criticism of Mr. Hoffman's *Man Who Was Shakespeare*." That is an old man's way (he's British, you know!) of saying the three of us are friends together.

The two girls did give us such a nice fifteenth wedding anniversary party. We were shooed out of the house from 12 until 4, but fortunately Leslie and Mary had asked us for lunch with Victoria Wedgewood, the historian. And a very pleasant person she was too, not the least of her good points being an admiration for your novels, one at least of which she had reviewed. She had also been started in history by G.M. Trevelyan, so we could all do a number of different steps to the minuet. The girls had asked, say, twenty couples, which was just the right number, had decorated the house with flowers, and gotten as entertainment a signing group of undergraduates called the Baker's Dozen, who sang all sorts of complimentary and nostalgic songs at decent intervals. (All this was Lizzie's idea of heaven, and in fact everyone enjoyed it.) There was champagne and a huge white-frosted wedding cake, with a couple of people to serve, and people brought pieces of crystal as tribute, which were fun to open, and one of the guests, a Louis Marz, wrote a sort of 'oundian Canto (#15 for the 15th) which I thought you might enjoy. I sent a copy to Hilda.

But I did think she might be interested in the clipping on Queen Elizabeth's corset, though the last of the 7 scrolls is for you. I sent you by surface a copy of the new O'Neill play, which I thought you might be interested in for p.a. reasons, but much more to the taste you describe is a

4

paperback copy of THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, which Susan says is horrible but compelling. I do this only in case the ouster movement of the Interplanetary goes through, for until we form our rump group we may have to, perhaps, be less open about our literature. I wait meanwhile for your list; I have one or two volumes of two-novels-in-a-single binding, but I am always suspicious of these as being infra dig. However, one of them is by Azimov who is not the worst of the s-f men.

I enclose a copy of my second letter from Victoria McAlmon, with a
photostat of his obituary. Not because I think it is very cheerful reading
for you, but simply to let you finish the chapter. A very good thing, I think,
that I got hold of his papers when I did, and followed up with the two purchases
afterwards. The Sato papers I have; the other I don't know about, unless
perhaps it is among the lengthy manuscripts I've really never read.

At last, I've heard from Miss Arabel Porter of New American Library,
to whom I sent Gate. She wrote: "We think THE GATE TO THE SEA by Bryher a
beautiful story — wonderfully poetic and wonderfully dramatic. But, indeed
I am afraid it is too long for NEW WORLD WRITING. And I agree with you that
it should not be cut. Furthermore, it is a well-knit work of art just as it
is, and we feel that it would not be wise to tamper with it by excerpting.
I am very sorry. It was good of you to give us an opportunity to read the
novella. Thank you." So, I guess that is that. But I must say that it is
an unusually enthusiastic letter from a group which doesn't give themselves
too readily to this sort of comment. I accept it as genuine, and not as a
put-off.

Two sections of the new version arrived in this afternoon's mail, but
I have not yet had a chance to study them as I shall want to do. For that,
more anon.

Your postcard after having noticed the letters of honors will do you
no good. How can we hope hope to separate you from your title. Fido R.S.L.
Don't you see.... my mind spins with possibilities. Fido raises sweet love-
thoughts. Fido rejects sugar lumps. It will be endless. My best will be
Fido returns sooner or later.

Too much has been happening for us to get hobbyity yet; if you haven't
ordered the later two books, why not wait, though I am sure we will joins the
ranks of aficionados eventually. And thanks too for the Emily Dickinson volumes
of poetry and biography, and for the Adams, which will be welcomed. And if
you can lay your hand on it, do send a note on the history and description of
my Christmas horse. You said one came from the shop. I am having a glass
case made for it, as you will see. It will keep the dust off, and elbows away.

Leslie and Mary go off next week. I have promised them each a copy of
volume one of the Tolkien, so they can read simultaneously on the boat. The
medgewood takes communion with you all in this regard, is absolutely devoted.
I feel like an uncircumsized jew for not having read them; all I can offer is
that I saw Tolkien.

I will try to cope with the Rochester people on the Close-Up blocks. We
had better try to settle one way or the other.

You say Hilda talks much about her childhood. If you do not feel in the
mood for the portrait of Adrienne, why not take down notes on what Cat said,
for me to tuck away.

In Gardner all goes on as before. Susan and I drove up on the 21st
the day of our anniversary itself. A kind of a gesture, which my mother
much appreciated, and she had a lunch (much as she had for you), with the
best service, all planned by her, and a break from the routine. My brother
and his wife (back from the sanitarium), and my sister and her husband. It
was very festive. My brother and Julia actually came down for the Sunday
party, as the others had planned to before all this happened. We will drive
up again on Sunday. But as my mother says: nothing changes. He lies there
inert, almost vegetable-like; they have him now so that he eats a little as
a tiny baby would eat. And the three nurses relieve each other and stated
intervals, and when something seems to go a little wrong then all science
jumps to the gun, and corrects it as they would correct the solution to make
a fragment of chicken liver endure in a laboratory. It would hurt my father
beyond all measure to think that he was this way, that he had worked hard,
and as he could, in order to support this kind of an end. I hear it now on
every side: tales of six months, two years, of relatives who endure. The
librarian of Yale told me his wife's father was kept alive for three years
at the cost of sixty thousand dollars. Now, you do see, don't you, that it
isn't the money that counts, or that would count if any happiness could be
given to anyone including my father himself. But if this kind of successful
science goes on, we will simply have to reform our ethics, for the situation
will change. The wife of the professor of American literature, whose papers
I now have to go through, told me she refused to let her husband go back to
the hospital at the end, for the doctor said that the hospital would have to
do things which would prolong life if he went. I do begin to understand things
I knew only intellectually before.

I musn't go on. It's ten-thirty and I'm still in the office. But it
has been hopeless to try to write you during the daytime, with people coming
in. Forgive me for having been silent so long. And for sinking you to the
floor with the weight of all this.

infinite love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

18 March 1956

Dearest Bryher:

We have had our blizzard too, the worst in seven years, with the snow swirling in high winds and making huge drifts that cover the lower windows in many homes. That was Friday. Yesterday was chaotic; it was St Patrick's Day, and there was to be a parade. So the city ploughed the line of march and left everything else a most leonine March. Cars were caught on curbs, and people moved only with difficulty. The man who does our ploughing had driven to upstate Connecticut the night before, and so finally yesterday morning I got two little boys and together we shoveled manfully so that Susan and susan could go downtown to try on susan's wedding gown. When their car had driven out, I rested on my shovel, panting. Then, of course, our man showed up, and with his motor plough redid in a quarter-hour what it had taken the last sap from my arms to accomplish. Today everything looks like a white gown trampled in the mud.

I'm sorry not to have written last week; it simply turned out to be filled with unexpected things, as on Friday when I had two funerals to go to. One was for the husband of our Helen, who cleans and washes for us. She died of a heart attack on Tuesday. I feel sorry for her, but she has one of those tightly-knit Polish families, and there are several still to bring back a paycheck each week. And of course if things go hard, we would gladly take her on for more days a week. Susan has to be away so much with her flower shows, that usually there is no one at home to answer the door or the telephone.

Last Sunday Susan and I drove to Gardner, but found things pretty much as they had been. They have stopped the intravenous feedings, because his arms refused to take them any more, but he now eats eggs and ice cream and cereals without gaining consciousness. My mother did say last night on the phone that his eyes seemed to follow the nurse around the room, but I doubt if it has any real significance. My poor mother! She says she feels as though she were living on a volcano with several openings. She does well, but it is taking her strength. They speak now of bringing him back to the house with some domestic nurses as attendance, and I agree that it is best under the circumstances. So long as he is in the hospital, with trained nurses, the weekly expense, not counting doctors and medical attention, runs to over three hundred dollars a week. Did I tell you that the father of one of my friends here had his father in law in this state for three years, and the bills were more than sixty thousand dollars? There is something so obseemely wasteful about it, especially with so much money lost over the past years by my father's businesses. How can I say it? It isn't the money really, though it might have made things easier eventually; what is offensive is to think he should have worked so hard over the years, only to have what was left used to keep him alive in a state he would have deplored. Don't worry about their managing; the store will keep on paying him until his death, and the insurance will be enough for my mother after that.

2

Ingholt is back, as of two Fridays ago, for his 60th birthday, and came in to see me on Monday. As I thought, the new pictures were only for his private study collection and not for the book, unless he chooses to use one or two in his introduction. They were taken for the Warburg Collection in London, and he was permitted to bring them out, reproduce what he wanted, and then send on to London. As he said, they did not compare with Islay's, but did have some different objects. So we are easy on that score. The matter of subvention, also, turned out as I thought; it is simply a matter for Wolff to arrange with them to let them have a certain number of copies at wholesale price, which loses us nothing, and means a better distribution within Pakistan. Ingholt does have one or two rearrangements to make among Islay's plates, but Islay will not mind that; it is just a very occasional re-shuffle. As to the title of the book, we settled, to Ingholt's complete satisfaction, on GANDHARAN ART IN PAKISTAN, which will please Islay, and is indeed less stuffy than what we had. The suggestion was Islay's. I have written him about my talk with Ingholt, except for the fact that apparently Auriel was a little hurt that neither Islay nor Methun called on him, even though he had arranged to have the films etc come in duty free through the customs. But I don't see that it matters. Ingholt will now get down to finishing the introduction, so things should pick up again.

Tell Hilda that I expect to be writing her in a few days, and send along the last section of the "Helen" poem for her to go over. Doing it this way seems to have worked quite well, though it would have been most difficult if we had not had those few days chez Brunner to go over the beginning queries orally. She knows now what I mean by my queries.

By the way, you have not sent me the signed contract for Beowulf, so that we have had to hold up my signing of the contract with Wolff, which would be illegal if it preceded my contract with you. I do hope that you can do this soon, so that we can get along with the book. Wolff sent up the proposed jacket, very gay indeed, with a nice drawing of a bulldog on a pedestal, freely rendered so that it does not look too realistic. We both rejected a splendid drawing, but it seemed like a real bulldog on the pavement instead of a pedestal.

The various packages of letters have begun to come in. It will be very simple to get my excellent bursary student, at no fee, to sort them and file them. Actually he has been doing this with such longer correspondences as those from Herring and George Plank, and even my own from you and Hilda. He works in the next room to me, and does not read.

I was truly sad at the letter from Margiad Evans' husband, and also from the one written by her last summer which you have just sent. It is too tragic, and she had a love for life that ought not to be denied.

I was interested too, of course for other reasons, in the letter from Collins about RUAN. Don't forget that it must come out on this side first, or at least must be considered here first. When do they plan to bring out THE PLAYER'S BOY? I was very pleased, by the by, with the German spread on your translation. They did a very nice job of it; thank you for sending.

I do think one had better try to get at the bottom of Robert's pressure. But how? Melitta is in a better position than most, I agree, to try to get at it. Robert's kind of life, and his desperation, make him a kind of easy prey. What does a man do, when he has been deprived of willpower as a birthright.

3

By now the Hotsons must have arrived in England, but I fear a gruesome crossing because of the storms, and a bed as cold as yours in their little flat. Alas, I called them the Friday morning two weeks ago, asking when I could come out with the two copies of Hobbity, but I had it in mind they were leaving the next Wednesday (even having the precise date), and had not bought the books. Mary said they were off the next morning, and when I had Susan call again to say her goodbyes and explore the time of departure, I found they were being driven from Northford at dawn. So the best I could do was to write to England and have a copy of volume one waiting for them in Cambridge.

I don't know Tolkien's address, other than Oxford; but why don't you drop a note to Leslie, who should be able to find it easily. I presume Tolkien will shy away from correspondence, of which he must get a great deal, and I imagine his sources are conjured up by the imagination from pretty much the same sources that you have. He used to be quite uninterested in contemporary fiction, and would probably not recognize your name unless he were introduced to it. I don't actually believe he has much documentary evidence, to judge from what my specialist friends say here when they talk about his novels, even being in raptures about them. I suspect that he was led towards this sort of thing (a) by C.S.Lewis, and (b) by this rather donnish imaginative power which the English and Scottish seem to have above all other races: to wit, George Macdonald (At the Back of the North Wind), Lewis Carroll, and others. Given myth as a joining force, I suppose even Lear might have created in this way what he lacked was an example.

Sorry about the bad luck with your typewriter, but really doubt that a huge machine would prove very useful to you. A typewriter gets to be so personal, as I know from my own which I have had since 1932. You couldn't move the big one around with you on your travels within Switzerland; and I think you may be making a good many such shifts as you are increasingly with Hilda. My suggestion would be, get a nice light one, hammer it to a pulp, and change it more often.

I had a copy of Horace's translations sent me in the new edition. I like them, as I liked them before, but not excessively. It is hard to capture the right tone for what now seems close to depravity when it is stated as Catullus does. That's where the French language, as you suggest, comes in so handily: their is a decorum to the language which makes the right tension between it and the indcorousness of his descriptions. Fesse has a different tone from buttocks, which sounds like a bloody steer.

Do send the Sitwell clippings, if you haven't. They are a part of history. And, by the way, many thanks for going to the trouble about the description of my little horse and rider. It is just what I wanted. I do cherish it.

I forgot to say that Susan is deep in Tolkien, and loving every page of it.

Glad the O'Neill arrived. Will send you a copy of the new J.F.Powers volume of short stories; a bit of Americana, and the reviews have been very good. You may remember his *Prince of Darkness*.

I'd be glad to see Beney, if you think he would like it, or if he would like to show his daughter a place like Yale. I leave to you. Doubt if we have anything of a business nature to discuss; a little different from the case of Philip with whom I might sometime have to work, especially if Doris does not improve.

18 March 1956

Dearest Bryher:

I enclose as in a separate letter, so that you can
show Hilda the other one if you want, a copy of what came to me from
Liveright when I wrote about the new edition of selected poems for
Hilda. It is too maddening, though what the lawyers said might happen.
"Now I shall have to go into New York and consult them, and God only
knows what I shall have to do. Dig and and perhaps go to law. I do
not want to put out a volume with them. They are a real shyster firm,
with no standing, and have done absolutely nothing for Hilda over all
these years. I suspect even their accounts which they sent to Harold.

Fortunately, the spring holidays begin this week, and since
I am not going away, I can concentrate on this and in getting something
begun. I am furious, but do not let Hilda know at this time. I will
keep you in touch.

The other thing is that the length of Hilda's "Helen"
poem will run to over 200 typed pages, and take more than that in printed
pages, even without having each section of each section start on a new
page as she would like. This means that we can't probably persuade Grove
to include it in the selected poems "Horace wants to bring out, and I am
especially anxious to have the war trilogy and the Avon poems in it. But
I gather she does want it out for her 70th. Will you take a look at the
attractive jobs that Vanni, in Milan, has been doing for Pound's things.
Hilda has just sent me a copy of their little anthology, and probably sent
one to you also. In case "rove won't consider this, what would you say to
my trying Vanni? Just as an alternative. I shall show Helen to Horace
once I get the parts back from Hilda. We would have to put up the money
for the Vanni probably, but it would be far less expensive than here, take
away the problem of reviews (or their absence at the moment), and it would
be beautifully done, I feel sure. Perhaps the boys could see it through
the press, and be sure that my corrections on the galleys were followed.
"Put I must say I can find no errors in the difficult texts of the new Pound
cantos or their other books. Again, do not mention to Kat

OPY

LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION
386 Fourth Avenue, New York 16, N. Y.

Cable: Liveright, New York

March 8, 1956

Mr. Norman Holmes Pearson,
Yale University,
New Haven, Conn.

Dear Mr. Pearson,

Thank you for your letter of March 6th, advising me that
you have given permission to M. Ginestier for French rights. We
forwarded this to Harold Doolittle because we have only English
language rights.

Regarding H. D.'s poetry, we published her early collection
at a time when it was a greater financial risk, and have since
renewed the copyright and printed another edition; and since we
have paid royalties regularly and they have been accepted without
question, we feel that we have both moral and legal rights. Actually,
had we not renewed the copyright in 1952, the book would have been
in public domain; and we function as her proper publisher, protecting
her rights.

During the war period, we had our correspondence with
Marion Moore, and she wrote us to deal with her brother, Harold
Doolittle. We did not know that you were representing her. If a
new book were to be issued, our stock would be valueless, and certainly
this is not the spirit in which we undertook the publication of H.D.'s
poems originally.

I shall be delighted and consider it an honor to issue a
fresh collection of H. D.'s poems, including any more recent ones,
and issue a beautiful edition in honor of her 70th birthday. We
would not only be willing to destroy the stock on hand, but I would
be pleased to make one up in the format similar to the poems of Villon
and Hart Crane, which I am sending you under separate cover.

I am also enclosing a copy of our catalog.

AP/RY

Mr. Edgar Lee Masters
Golfmead-on-the-Wootle
Rydal, Pennsylvania

My dear Mr. Masters:

It gives me very great pleasure indeed to inform you that you have been given a Bryher Award in recognition of your fine achievements in writing, and with the hope on our part that the $250.00 which the award represents will be of some use to you in connection with the writing you are now engaged on. The Bryher Foundation was established earlier this year in order to help writing in this country as best we could with the somewhat limited funds now at our disposal. As our funds increase, and our experience in using it develops, I hope that this particular foundation will be able to achieve something of the good that it could and ought to do. To be able to make such an award as this to you, as one of our first, gives us the sense of at least recognizing merit, though we could wish that the sum which goes to you could be more than the token it is. As part of our present policy we are making no public announcement of the award, but you are of course free to refer to it at any time and in any way you wish. Our primary desire that is that we should recognize others rather than build a reputation for the foundation itself.

I enclose a cheque for $250.00, which I hope will reach you safely. With it goes, without saying, our warmest wishes for a pleasant Christmas season for you and Mrs. Masters.

NHP/dm

Enc.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN, CONN

20 March 1956

Dear Bryher:

Delighted you liked the O'Neill play. So did I. Actually I read it first in ms before the war, when literally less than a handful had. O'Neill asked me to, when he presented me with the actual ms, which I kept in my safe-deposit box during the time I was abroad. When I came back I persuaded them to let it go to Yale, as from him, but of course "sealed" on the supposition that it would not be published until twenty-five years after his death. The idea was that if I owned it, it could not fall into the hands of Oona Chaplin, a son who was a bad lot, and my own close friend, E.G.OjN., jr. Walter would have been interested that Gene took the name of an older brother who died in infancy for himself, giving the infant his own name; otherwise it was as it was. The mother took dope, and finally died of it, her mind no doubt weakened. The father was made miserable by being typed to the role of the Count of Monte Christo in which he was such a success, his efforts to get money and be respectable impelled by boyhood poverty. You are quite right about the desire to be a poet; it was always in O'Neill, only the words were not there. I wish you could see some of the poems he left. They are terrible. Some day I will tell you more about all this, and especially about Charlotta, the last wife. Their last years together were Gothic, a deliberate effort to undermine his spirit so as to keep him in her control. No friends allowed, except myself. Then a violent break with me too. "You see, Eugene will never write again, will you Eugene?" Merrill has tales to stand your hair on end.

Thank you for sending back the contract. I was worried. Everything seems to be in order, and I shall be reading proof soon. Unless you give a frodo scream, will not bother you with galleys; but tell Hilda I shall see she gets a set of the Freud in two or three weeks.

Both parts of the *Gate* are now here, and I have read. So has Susan. We both agree that it is much tightened and improved. I sent up cheers. There are a few queries I'd like to make, but do not know whether you have a copy with you. If you can get Elsie or someone to send, will detail them to you. For example:

"This was the moment to lie asleep on the pillow of a young man's shoulder, Rufus perhaps or Patius, who was good with horses."

Now Fido! Such depraved thoughts. Even if exhilarating, do we dare get away with it. I blushed. "Only then, alas, one had to be a Lucanian." Such queer habits, these Lucanians must have had.

The J.F.Powers book is not in get at the local store, but will send when it arrives. The Michaux sounds interesting, but better let me catch up with back reading before sending.

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

2 April 1956

Dearest Bryher:

I wrote to Kenwin despite your report of Elsie's flu.
You seemed dogged by these things at your tail. Your letter of the
29th is miraculously here this morning as I begin the week at the office.
With good weather coming back, the transit time diminishes.

Poor Heydt, how maladroit! But I suppose he felt that
he could not otherwise face her denials than by telling Hilda he knew
it from you. However, Hilda will not bear you a grudge; really, at heart
she likes to be fussed over, squeal with outrage though she does. She
should indeed, abstractly speaking, have some one with her constantly;
but we must face up to it that there is really no one, except for you or
myself, who could do this; not even Pup, I think: the old strain would
come back if prolonged indefinitely. My own feeling, for the present,
is that we must still plan for her to have at least two returns a year
to Kusnacht, for a month or more (Kusnacht, that is, or environs), which
will give you some leeway and freedom. In any event, I think that your
absence for a month at any time (say when you do Scilly orIRE) will not
matter that much, although of course it is not good for her to have any
setback. Actually, however, our goal is to get her over to the States
this fall, and into the hands of Prutting.

I read Robert's earlier letter asking for money. It does
look as though something were up; if only one knew. Would a talk between
Philip and Palmer be of any help. I don't mean that one <u>should</u> bail Robert
out as a result of this, but at least one would know where one stood. Or
rather where he stands. A Teddy Boy and his girl! What a fantasy this is.
My mind goes back to the guardsman uniform, because these are linked as
vicious sources of derived energy and vitality for what must be an
essential impotency on Robert's part. (Sex would only be a small part or
manifestation of this). The Teddy Boy (marked by his dress, which is a true
uniform) is a vulgarization of the guardsman as a symbol of vitality. Robert
has always been an immensely lonely and frustrated individual without any
inner strength to fall back on. I think of him as one of those kept so long
at the maternal breast, that even when the milk turned acid to the lips one
had become dependent on it: first as nourishment, then as antagonist. I
have more hope of Joceyln because he does have his friends and his writing;
Blakeston is another example of whose continued umbilical connection one is
amazed. How right it was, and how necessary, that you should have insisted
on a McAlmon and then a Kenneth in order to be free, as you became. But you
have will power, and Robert does not! I am a little frightened of Glover,
of course, after the Walter episodes, but perhaps it is the only way for
the moment. But do think of Philip, who can talk to Palmer as a man of the
world.

3

and to go ahead with the plans with Grove. He would draft a letter for me to write in reply to their response to mine. But Saturday morning's mail brought a note for him, saying he had second thoughts about their rights, and was not so sure as he had been, and for me under no circumstances to write Liveright until he had heard from me. So there we are. Meanwhile I had phoned Horace and made arrangements for a meeting with Grove tomorrow in New York, but I shall go all the same, and simply explain the difficulty and suggest we begin work on the selections so as not to waste time. I have to know how long a book they will permit, and things of that sort. What a pity Hilda should have gotten in with a house that turned out (no fault of hers) to be such scoundrels. I simply will not permit Liveright to bring out a new collected poems. It would be an act of suicide.

The various envelopes of letters have arrived, and because I had to search for the Beowulf contract, I did go through them all, and have put them away in the various folders, leaving it to the boy simply to put them in chronological order. Your monument room is really impressive now. And thank you for getting Hilda into the habit of saving letters to send on to me. It is especially important in case anything should happen to you, that I have the feel of her various relationships. This reminds me too about the Presbyterrean articles by her, though there is no absolute hurry. Whether you could persuade her to let you send over the originals because of the exhibition I don't know. Perhaps it doesn't matter; I certainly don't want to pressure her. But no harm, I think, in giving me the bibliographical references, which I can say I dug out, and have photostats made to put into the showcases. An exhibition always picks up in interest when one has really early things.

I shall take down a copy of the Helen sequence tomorrow for Horace to take a look at. No point in planning until he has seen it, for I do not want to cut in on his pleasure in feeling that he is doing something (as indeed he truly is) for Hilda and indirectly for you. But I fear, since the Helen ms is almost 200 pages, that it would overwhelm what they plan as a "selected" volume. That was my reason for mentioning the Italian house as a possible publisher so that we could have it out in her 70th year. Thank you for sending the Leuke, which arrived safely. Her first part, sent surface, is not yet here.

The biographical volume of Dickinson is here, but the two volumes of text have not arrived. They will. I notice a new little B&F book advertised in the Times yesterday. Shall I order for you.

Little susan is back with her all her possessions, to prepare for the wedding. Frankly I think the next three weeks will be a kind of madhouse, with all nerves strained. How glad I shall be when it is over.

All love as always,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

5 April 1956

Dearest Bryher:

Yale recommences tomorrow, after the Easter holidays, so I am back at the office tonight to work on the galleys of Beowulf which came in this morning. The galleys for Hilda's *tribute* came Tuesday afternoon, but since I have sent her a duplicate set of the galleys to go over, I decided I'd better get at yours first in order to send back. The first two galley sheets of Beowulf look superb, and I give a tremendous Anglo-Saxon cry of triumph as I finish them.

The B&F quarto arrived this morning also, from you, as did the three volumes of Emily Dickinson's poems. I really am immensely grateful for them, and Jean did good even though in a diverted direction. The "enry Adams biography also arrived, so I had a full postal box.

Yesterday I went to New York to see the Grove Press, with Horace, about Hilda's Selected Poems. Monday, alas, I had a less jubilant note from the New York lawyers, telling me they were having second thoughts, and under no circumstances to write Liveright until they heard from me. So I wait to hear from them, although of course in no circumstances would I have written except as they directed. However I went to New York all the same, and Grove is quite happy to do a volume, although I can sign no contract until I have cleared up the other matter. Horace has been most persuasive with them on the matter, and deserves all credit. I was little more than a business agent. They are thinking of a primarily paper-back distribution and I have no objection to this, although I did insist on a small hardback edition to accompany it for the sake of reviews etc. They raised no objection. Their idea is about 200 hundred pages of text, which would of course count out the new "Helen" sequence, although as I told you I had given up the idea of including that when I saw how long it turned out to be. But when I mentioned having it printed in Italy, they were interested in taking some sheets or bound copies for distribution, which would be an excellent arrangement. Horace's idea was that I should do an introduction, but I am against introductions, and think Hilda's book can more than stand for itself and on its own feet. I prefer more space for poetry. The publishers seemed to agree with me on this. But do not, still, please, mention any of this to Hilda; I want the Liveright matter settled so that the situation is unequivocal before mentioning it to her. I feel sure you would agree in this.

Your letter to Susan with the cheque for susan arrived today, and susan is delighted with your generosity. I join my thanks to theirs.

I am much interested in your interpretation of the *Wolves* difficulty. It is almost unthinkable, for they are Pantheon, not only in the eyes of everyone, but completely in terms of the success of the firm. If this is true, it can only be, I should think, the paradoxical success of Anne Lindberg's book, which was of course their feat, no one else's. Kyril Shaberth is responsible for the money but not for the talent which has given

2

Pantheon its special place. If the Wolves go, most of their authors would go with them, and you and I with them, your hand in mine as we have always held them together. But one can only wait and see. I shall keep mum, and not give you away; but this may account for the fact that Kurt's letters recently to me, though of course as friendly as always have seemed a little pre-occupied.

No news of Osbert since he arrived, but I am rather out of the Monroe Wheeler group as you know. It is rather an occupation, and I have too many berufs at the moment. I wish I could see him, but prefer it entre deux.

Must break off and get to the galleys. All love. Will keep you in touch. A scratch behind the ears and a pat on the rump.

Norrum

8 April 1956

Dearest Bryher:

What a wretched day. April 8th, and it snows outside! No one is out, everyone feels cheated, and the whole world is uninhobbit.

But it does give me another Sunday at the office, while Susan and susan go on with their plans for the wedding. I am really excluded. They are nice about it, but they have entered a kind of private woman's world in which they are self-sufficient. Early wedding presents are already laid upon a linen-covered table in Lizzie's room, to which they add each day, and susan goes off to write her thank-you letters. The wedding gown requires only one more fitting (my only excursion has been to have my morning coat let out at the waist, so long has it been since I wore it), the music has been planned for, and the flowers decided on. So I stay here, desperately writing letters asking for questions on the final examinations for the students at June, last letters of recommendation, to slay about the book, and so on and so on. With some of the Beowulf proof still left to do, and all of Hilda's left also. But things march.

I enclose a letter from Ernst Freud in answer to mine, which will not surprise you so much as it disappointed me. "We did not get the idea of course at all: what so-called trivial letters can reveal of the warmth of his father's personality. And Anna! One can feel her clutching hand. "Sigmund Freud Copyrights Ltd." has an ominous, or at least distasteful ring in my ears. I cannot really think Papa would approve. Freud's letter arrived yesterday, and I have sent off a list of the nine he approved to Wolff to let them know whether to use those or none at all. They did not approve the letter thanking for the orchids which Hilda used in the book itself, though I told him it was already there. But since it has appeared long before in print, and is available, I shall include that anyhow, and told Wolff so. Do not return the copy, or send it to Hilda. I will let her know after I hear from Wolff, but why drag in E.F.'s final and gratitious paragraph. What Anna and Ernst want is a bronze god stuffed with bank notes.

I have also heard from my lawyer, and written Liveright as follows:

"I have delayed answering your letter of March 8th, since it raises questions which I as a layman felt uncertain of the answers and on which I have sought legal advice. "They relate to your assumption that you have the right to publish a new edition of H.D.'s poems after the expiration of the original copyright. To this I am unable to agree. Your rights are defined by the original letter-agreement between H.D. and Boni and Liveright dated December 17, 1924. They are of course limited by that letter and run only for the term of the original copyright which expired on May 1, 1953. Your taking out a renewal copyright in the name of H.D. was in accord with the customary service prevailing with publishers; if anything, it is an admission on your

part that you had no renewal rights as a publisher.

"My position is that you still have the right, subject to royalty payment, to sell off any stock on hand, and nothing more. It follows that your right to share in any money from permissions likewise ceased as of May 1, 1953 and that any deduction made by you on that score should not have been made and should be repaid.

"I naturally regret having to take this stand but am compelled to do so in the author's interest, since she has other plans for a new publication elsewhere, to comprise many poems not included in the present volume.

"With kind personal regards, I am,

So we will wait and see what happens from that. This will not quite end it, you can be sure.

Incidentally, the package of Marianne's letters to Hilda about her inter-
course on Hilda's behalf with Liveright, have arrived, and should prove useful
perhaps in establishing Hilda's unwillingness to remain with them, and the
unsatisfactory nature of the relationship between her and the publishers. It
is a good example, under the circumstances, of how valuable it is for me to
have already on hand any such matters of this kind. Marianne couldn't have
done better, but they certainly intimidated her.

If all this clears up satisfactorily so that we can proceed with the *rove*
edition, do tell me whether I should try to persuade Hilda to sell me the
rights to the book, as she did for the *Freud volume* a year or two back, *or*
whether she should sell the rights to Perdita, or whether it should be signed
in her own name with the deductions to the English tax authorities on each
statement of income from royalties or permissions fees. I do not want to take
a false step in the matter, nor to antagonize John or Pup, though they would
probably know nothing of it, since I would make the money over to Hilda, less
what tax I had to pay on it, or to her brother. After Hilda's death I could
re-sell the copyrights to Perdita if that seems wisest, unless she left you
the rights to all literary matters as well as the papers themselves. Do advise
me on this matter.

I have been thinking over the exhibition in Hilda's honor this fall, and have
wondered whether it might not be a good thing to bring out a little checklist
of her works, to be sold at a moderate price and published by the Yale Library
to accompany the show. There would not be any very large sale, but in the long
run 200-300 distributed copies would be good for reputation and study, I think,
especially with a new selection appearing. The Yale Library couldn't put up the
money for this, but my idea would be simply to give them the cost of the book,
let them have any income to spend, let us say, towards a similar list for
an exhibition of Marianne next fall, so we might want to put in a little more
than too. Donald Gallup, my faithful one, says he will put it together from
our notes, and he is of course one of the leading bibliographers of contemporary
writing, and is a good name to have on the book. I also thought, though this
is uncretain and a guess, that I might try to persuade Ezra to do a little
introduction, for which I should want to pay him, but which would make it a
Pound item as well. Certainly it would be suitable, though he doesn't often
do this kind of thing, and is busy with his cantos. I'd suggest sending the
check to Dorothy or anyone he wanted it to go to. Some day there'll have to
be a list for Hilda, and this is the moment that would give her the most fun.

C O P Y

4th April, 1956

Dear Professor Pearson,

Thanks for your letter of March 23rd. What a coincidence
that we should have met before and are now concerned with these
letters. I shall mention you to the Lewisohn's when I see them
next.

I have read the letters with great interest and have also
shown them to my sister Anna. Only a short time ago we established
the policy not to allow publications of any complete correspondence
for the time being, and as I had to refuse several requests only
lately I cannot make any exceptions. We have selected nine out of
the total, which I have marked 'yes', for which we would give you
permission to publish with the remark "By Permission of Sigmund
Freud Copyrights Ltd." You will notice that the letters I marked
with 'No' are either unimportant, too personal, or mention people
who might resent this. I hope that my decision won't disappoint
you too much.

By the way, I remember H.D.'s article from Life and Letters and
I cannot fully share your enthusiasm about it.

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL IS RESTRICTED

## Typography
As Fine Art

THE CRYSTAL GOBLET: Sixteen
Essays on Typography.

By Beatrice Warde. Selected and
c edited by Henry Jacob. 221 pp.
Cleveland: The World Publishing
Company. $6.

Reviewed by
JOHN T. WINTERICH

BEATRICE WARDE is an exceptional person in more ways than one. Her mother is May Lamberton Becker, long conductor of the Reader's Guide in the New York Herald Tribune Book Review, a fact that helps to account for the daughter's affinity for the printed page. She is an expert and an artist in the fields of typography and book design. She has the competence to treat those subjects cogently and fluently, and she has, equally, the gift of transferring her enthusiasms, whether she is concerned with "taking the Bible out of the telephone book class" or discussing the special problems posed by a book of verse. She writes with grace and authority, with charm and conviction.

Mrs. Warde has long been an eloquent expositor of her craft, and "The Crystal Goblet" is a gathering of what Mr. Jacob properly regards as the best and most representative of her talks and papers. The title of the title paper itself has been superimposed (by the author, presumably) on an earlier title, "Printing Should Be Invisible," a pronouncement of a credo which in twenty-four years has become one of the classic documents of typography.

That great unentity, the average reader, little notes nor long remembers (even if he reads the colophon of a Knopf book) "the little black marks" (in Mrs. Warde's phrase) which have brought him instruction or entertainment or exaltation across a foot and a half of air. "The Crystal Goblet," though largely, in the first instance, addressed to professionals, is completely within the scope of the layman. "If there is a sentence that cannot in its context make some sort of sense to the average citizen who knows nothing about printing," says Mrs. Warde, "I shall be the one to reproach." No reproach is called for. But the declaration should not scare off any citizen of "the small but lively world" of

## Book and Author

### Man in Search of That I

By JOHN K. HUTCHENS

WE HAVE with us today a Canadian who, as a writer of books, is making only his second appearance on this side of the great undefended border, though Robert Thomas Allen in person has visited us at some length. In fact, accompanied by his wife and two daughters, he has been all over the place, with results as noted in this amiable chronicle* of a search. Their search was for the Perfect Place to Live, and they found it: an unidentified Lotus-land on the Pacific Coast not far from Los Angeles. They are now back in Toronto, where they started from, and how does Mr. Allen think* the California Chamber of Commerce is going to like that?

If his character comes correctly through his prose, Mr. Allen has been through too many vicissitudes to care much one way or the other. Besides, the Allen family departed California for a reason that shouldn't unduly vex any chamber of commerce anywhere. The reason was simply that life in Southern California was so perfect that it gave a writer no excuse for not writing—a dilemma that wouldn't unnerve absolutely every one but clearly put Mr. Allen on the spot. In the tradition of the kind of humorist that he is, Mr. Allen thrives on small annoyances which he turns into cash. No annoyances, no cash.

Of course, he may simply have been homesick. At the beginning, some time in the middle 1940s, he was apparently sick of home. "Do you know how little sunshine we get in Toronto in a year?" he asked his wife. It was a rhetorical question, and Toronto, in turn, probably won't thank him now for spreading the word around. In any case, off they went, in a 1934 Chevrolet and on the wings of

an old, delusive dream: self-employed writer working where and when he chooses, children educated by travel, sunshine as well as gold waiting at the rainbow's end. They were barely under way when they noticed that Mary, age two, had got quite drunk on a bottle of medicine designed to ward off car sickness.

And not so much later it transpired that the great international border isn't so undefended as

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13 April 1956

Dearest Bryber—

Your wire arrived this morning, your letter with its wonderful gift a day or so back, and also today two more letters—one this morning and another this afternoon. And so, in a day that would have been otherwise filled only with my lecture and the long and exhausting lines of students waiting for me to go over their next year's schedule, you were, so to speak, much with me. Which is as I want it to be, and the fulfillment is the best present of all.

I might the girls and Susan and I will go out for dinner and then to the theatre. I shall not take a single book home!

All love as always,
Norman

Written at 6, at the end of an exhausting day.

15 April 1956

Dearest Bryher:

I warned you! This past week has been a very divil. The house, of course, has been a kind of lurly-burly, though all tempers have remained calm, and there has been a kind of carnival air about the boxes which keep coming with wedding presents, the various preparations still going on -- I only hope Lizzie waits a little.

And then there were the students who wanted to talk about enrolling in American Studies, or wanted to get their schedules arranged for senior year, and insist on coming only at the end of an afternoon and on masse, rather than singly.

And, foolishly, I had agreed to talk to a "Half-hour "leading Club" in Branford on Thursday; and since it meant a small fee, I really couldn't back out of it -- not because of the fee, but because they had had it printed on their program last September. But I went, and talked to them about Wallace Stevens, and read them some poems, and they seemed to like it; but, alas, where did they get the half-hour angle, for it was two and a half hours before I could get on the platform and off it and have a cup of tea and get back to the students in my office.

My birthday was hardly relaxed, for I had a lecture in the morning, and a solid day of students lined up waiting for conferences. But I courageously did not take a single book home at 6:30 when I could leave, and took Susan and the two girls out to dinner and then to the theatre, where we saw a trivial but frivolous play which was no great shakes as drama but, just right for a birthday cake. Your letter was infinitely generous with its chaceque which will do valiant service for me when I begin on Hawthorne, and proved a subsidiary godsend until the first of the month, by letting me pay my income tax on time. As of the first, however, the full amount will go into the little account with the 3000 against secretarial expenses, probably a new heavy typewriter so there can be a decent copy made for the printer, and, maybe, one of these portable photostatting machines to take with me when I search for footnote material. Do not think again of the little figure for the collection; your generosity already surrounds me and sustains me, but nothing like, even so, the way in which our particular friendship and love always supports my spirit. I do not talk of it often, but I think you know.

This is Sunday morning at the office. I spent yesterday on Hilda's things, writing the material for the jacket of her FREUD, etc. Kurt very much wants to include the nine letters which Copyrights Ltd allowed, altho finding Ernst Freud's letter most unfriendly; and so I have agreed. And I reworked my little prefatory note to fit the altered circumstances and indicate the situation. I enclose a copy of it. Then, as Hilda may have written you in a natural enough frenzy, she discovered that a final section of FREUD was not sent to the printers by me at all. It had been separately filed, and my wits did not discover it, because of what seemed to be an

Reading the letters from Freud to H.D., one early winter's day in Switzerland where she now lives, it was clear to me that they properly belonged in an appendix to her homage to "the Professor." Not as affidavit, but as an extension of that special warmth which Freud showed toward the creative spirit and its search for identity and direction. For Freud himself was not only a scientist but artist, the creator of a human drama, a modern Homer writing the epic of man, or shall we say he was an Old Testament prophet devising a new book of the Apocrypha.

So I asked H.D. for the privilege of printing the letters here, and then, later, secured the permission from his heirs for those which they selected from the many he had written her.

N.H.P.

The selection of letters in the appendix is printed "By Permission of Sigmund Freud Copyrights Ltd."

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

14 May 1956

Dearest Bryher:

De groundis, with the typewriter ribbon as exhausted as I am.
Never shall I be so glad as when this term ends; there have been so many
complications and last minute chores to perform, with the final examinations
scheduled to begin on Wednesday, and obviously going to continue ad nauseum
for another week or more. And I, at such a moment, brought down with a cold
which stuffs my nose and numbs my senses.

You will have to wait still patiently for a letter of "events,"
for I have two more five-hundred page dissertations to read (unfortunately I
had to fail the last one, just finished), and term papers as well as the exams
to read before I can get to Gladys' book, two ms novels, the two book reviews
I have promised, and the 15,000 sketch of the history of American literature
which is due by June 15th.

But you are in London, and there are a number of things to go
get to you before you leave for Switzerland and Hildafaragain. They cover too
long a span of my necessary remissness.

First of all, the Close-Up blocks. I talked to Beaumont Newhall, the curator of the George Eastman House, as I told you I would (when he came to lecture at Yale, not having replied to my letter to him), and he told me that they would be delighted to have them as a part of their collection. Islay will know of what they do from the issues of Image to which I subscribed for him. (I suspect he never did know from whence the subscription came; do explain.) From my point of view, --that is, as I see it -- this is the best possible place for them to be; for they have the greatest collection of the history of photography, and have a stunning collection of the history of the cinema, far better cared for than the Museum of Modern Art can do. We will write to whomever you want, if a letter is necessary to clear them; and I told him that I would reimburse to him and the Eastman House the cost of transporting them to the States, if it was preferable that the bill should seem to be paid for by them. If not, simply have them shipped to George Eastman House, Inc. 900 East Avenue, Rochester 7, N.Y. There will be no problem about duty on this side, since they are a charitable institution, and receive such things duty-free. And I wonder really if there would be any trouble about shipping them out to the House, since they really have no commercial value in themselves. Get Maggs to handle this for you; at least I am sure that they, or Rita's outfit, would be willing to check on the export matters concerned. At any rate, talk this over with Kenneth and with Islay, and make some arrangements as to whom Newhall should write officially, if such a letter is actually needed.

Then there is the matter of having a print made for me of Borderline.
There really should be at least one print made of it which is in the States, and
I'd like one for the muniment room, and perhaps also, because of the Close-Up
blocks there might well be one given to the George Eastman House for their
collection. This is not the Museum of Modern Art Collection, --far from it. But if

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

15 May 1956

Dearest Fido:

Wrote you last night, taking the letter to the main postoffice in my hot little hands at 10:30, so that I could get home to go on reading a 400-page academic study of John Forster's literary criticism. Rather dull, I must admit, though there are moments of grace suitable to Sister Mary Valista who did the dissertation. But, off dear, it is a little like opening Walsingham's tombs to delve into Forster: one pries with a pickaxe and finds only sand. Was there ever a body there at all? It makes me very dubious about returning to Hawthorne and his letters, except for the holiday from lecturing and administration and the chance to satisfy my conscience.

As for the Quantity, I am rather intrigued by the possibility of having Maggs take your collection as a nucleus, not however throwing away any puppyish copies of your own from girlhood days, and trying for the next few years to build up a real collection. Beaumont & Fletcher on the one hand, and "enty on the other? Why not, indeed. But actually only such a true collection of first editions would be permanently important for the future, and to it Maggs might add, if they appeared at not too great a price, letters which might be of use to some future biographer. I say this because the project appears to me to be great fun as well as to have some importance; -- and rather specially appropriate for you to assemble. But I do not of course really know what sums of money this would involve. My hunch is that although the books are difficult, the problem would not compare to the costs for more "established" authors who are fashionably rated. Had it been one of those, I should have said no. As it is, I suspect your collection would be more or less unique.

Sorry to hear that Islay is unwell. How I sympathize, having for the past fortnight (mostly, I suppose, because of being fatigued) had a perfectly wretched cold which has sapped my energy and kept me blowing my nose constantly. I realize more than ever how much one has to live on one's nerves and through one's will-power, but will be all the more glad when I don't have to.

Kenneth's ear for what is up has always been good, and one cannot help but take seriously what he says. If only he could get rid of Tuoro! Having the flat in Rome and his place in the country, Tuoro isn't at all like keeping Kenwin, I think. If he ever wants to ship anything of Uncle Norman's over to the States for safe-keeping (I mean especially mass or the rarer items) they could be stored for him here and then shipped or taken back whenever things cleared up or if needed by him. Just a suggestion, which you might pass on.

As George would say, I spin the wheel and tell my beads that Hilda may be slumbering with you and Doris on September 1st.

I only wish I could unleash you so that we could have a romp together. If Hilda doesn't come, shall we consider Dinosaur Valley for September, after Maine? Why not?

Affection to the Pakistani boys again, and a nuzzling of our noses for you.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

3 June 1956

Dearest Fido:

You are a good Fido to have written me so faithfully during this long period of silence on my part. I am just back from Rochester this morning, where I went Thursday night to do some work on Hawthorne letters and act as an outside examiner for the honors students at the university there in their final tests for a degree. I am exhausted from the goings-on there as well as the two nights in the sleeper, but begin to be sustained by the knowledge that most of the big hurdles are now over, and I can begin again to scratch your ears and give you an epistolary pat on the rump with some regularity from now on. I won't try to cover the background of the last few weeks in this letter, but before the seven-days are up we should be well caught up.

Your letter of the 28th was waiting for me, and I was happy to know that you had settled Hilda in at Kusnacht again. I had lunch today with a nice old lady of 84, the amanuensis of Jung, who adores staying at Die Sonne, but I myself much prefer having Hilda on the grounds so to speak, where Heydt and the others can keep an eye on her and persuade her into having something of a physical check-up while she puts things in order. I should let it stay this way for next winter, if indicated. Hilda seems quite happy about being at the Verona, and one does have the feeling that even with the changes (which can be at least a subject for discussion) this will continue the pied-a-terre. Only we must not relinquish the persuasion that she should come to the States with you in September.

We have the 1st September down as a holy day because of your arrival, and a good deal of our plans will of course depend on whether or not Kat comes. I do think you would find more than two or three days at the most, with the Hotsons, about all the brew that your cup of tea would hold. I do have an idea, or several of them. Doris will of course make an excellent excuse, and you can play that to the limit when the time draws near. Then you and I can get into the Oldsmobile, and I will drive you to Portland, by way of New Hampshire (which you have not seen), and from there you can take the train to Leslie and Mary. Meanwhile I have Hawthorne things I can do at several spots in Maine, and either drive to Sorento to pick you up, or you can join me at Portland again and we can drive back. We'll figure out a way to make my researches just fit the proper time of your visit. That will give us a chance to talk, such as we had on our mission to Hodgson.

You mentioned the Sybelle Bedford and the Angus Wilson books.
Should I read?

I have tried to check on Tolkien's conversion (reported) but
have not been able to verify this by any channels of gossip thus far. However
a friend of mine is to be at Oxford this month, and may have news when he
returns.

I long for more details of your trip to England: of the luncheon

with Edith, and your visit to George, of which I caught only the glimpse
he gave in his letter to you. I should have thought it must have been
most hectic. In Rochester I spoke again with the curator at the George
Eastman House, and we wait now only for your instructions and Kenneth's
as to whether a formal letter from them in necessary for the export of the
blocks. Perhaps you will want to take care of this when you go over next
time.

Meanwhile, of you have anything like a free moment at Kenwin, do not
forget to get me the references for the Presybeterrean articles of Hilda,
and anything else, bibliographically speaking, (articles in out of the way
spots, etc, which you may think I do not have.) I want to begin to make plans
for the bibliography in the fall.

I go to New York on Tuesday, and hope to have an appointment with the
Grove Press people about Hilda's book. Horace is sick with some sort of
dysentery, who that he cannot join us. I heard nothing from Liveright in
answer to my letter announcing I was going out on my own; and my lawyers now
think I should explain the situation carefully to Grove, and see if they are
willing to go ahead. My plan would be to make a formal announcement of the
new book, plus an announcement that all matters of permissions etc, no matter
where, should be referred to me; and send them that. Like posting bans of
marriage. Not to replit to this, if they do intend to do anything later, would
prejudice any jury against them, I think. But of course I do nothing without
legal advice. I shall write to Hilda only after Tuesday.

Horace, as you know, is wildly excited about the *Helen* sequence. "There
is little doubt that the poem is Hilda's masterpiece," he says; and under
such circumstances I do not think it is indicated to carry out my earlier
plan for having it published in Italy with only a few sheets brought here.
Better to wait, Horace thinks, and I agree, until the path has been cleared
with the selected poems, and *then*, say she fall after this, bring out the
Helen itself. Horace has really been splendid about this, and nothing would
have happened I am sure if it were not for him. But better not speak to Kat
until after Tuesday.

Your Japanese plans sound fine, but I agree with Islay that spring is
better than fall, and I doubt I could get away until the back is broken of
the immense amount of work on the Hawthorne letters.

By the way, I wrote Islay advising he inquire from Gai whether or not
the head which Ingholt is using as frontispiece for the book is for sale,
and if it is not too high, Ingholt thinks that you or Islay or I ought to
try to secure it, since its price will rise immensely once it has been given
such prominence. I told Islay that if he didn't want it, or you didn't, then
I would see if I could afford it. Do get Islay by the way to send Ingholt
snapshots of his new pieces for Ingholt's overall collection. He is delighted
that you are sending him a picture of your own piece.

Must close and run home to shut up the house, since it looks like a storm
brewing. Do take care of yourself, my dear.

5 June 1956

Dearest Bryher:

Yesterday was too filled to let me write, and now
I wait in my office only a few moments until it is time to take
the train for New York.

But did realize last night that in the flush and
flurry of writing you, I never mentioned my enjoyment of your
schoolgirl reunion piece: extremely interesting and very fair,
I thought. It was an excellent idea to get your notes down, and
as for me I cherished every word of it.

To speak of more secretive writing, I received the
copies of *Borderline* with gratitude. Now, for the sake of the
record, — one does not rush into print with this of course — who
actually wrote it? You? Kenneth?

The photographs of Hilda were exceptionally good; I
had seen one or two before. I suspect that even more than Edith has,
she has the feeling that might have made her a fine actress had she
not become a great poet.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

8 June 1956

Dearest Bryher:

My letters have indeed been scanty for the last month, and I have been as sorry as I have been exhausted. It is not that I have not thought of you constantly, nor had you before me, as it were, when I have been doing the proofs of Beowulf, the galleys of Hilda's Freud, several interviews with Ingholt about the Sandhara book, and visits with the Wolves while we made plans. But I don't suppose that anyone who is not actually at my elbow can see what the days and nights become at this time of year: the two-day comprehensive examinations, the finals, the recommendations for honors, the three dissertations to read (two of which I failed), the inescapable and all-day departmental and committee meetings, the readings of long essays handed in for my graduate seminar (from all 25 of them), the conferences with these students and undergraduates, the last minute letters of recommendation they want for jobs, the speeches I have had to make at dinners which were the undergraduate farewells (I think I told you the graduating class dedicated their year book to me, which meant I had to accept more than ever), a speaking engagement at Choate School in Wallingford, and another at the annual meeting of the Mark Twain Memorial in Hartford, where I am supposed to supervise the reconstruction of their museum, the trip to Rochester where I was the external examiner for the Honors students, and did an extra day's work (from 8:30 A.M. until 6 P.M.) in a bank on the papers of Hawthorne's protégé Delia Bacon, a branch of whose family had gone to Rochester; the some sixty letters I had to write for the fund campaign of International House in New Haven, whose president I am, alas, for whom I had to engage a new director and assistant director, alas, and whose annual meeting, next year's budget, etc. have consumed my time. But actually of course this would not matter so much, since I work at the office nights as well as days, and weekends, were it not for the interruptions; students who want to say goodbye, ask what they should see on their holiday in Spain, etc. The truth is I seldom get a quarter of an hour without some one coming to the office, or ten minutes without a ring on the phone. All luncheons have business connected with them, as a poor aid to digestion. And then the students wail at what they call the inaccessibility of the faculty, and the lack of close student-teacher relationships. I have my own wail! But when I have finished a 15000 word history of American Literature (not yet even begun), which is due by the 16th, and tidied up the edition of letters written by Susan's great-great grandmother, or maybe farther back, written in 1800-1801, I shall begin to enjoy my sebatical.

And so do forgive me, dear Bryher, and I know you do and always have on such occasions. Alcoholics have their periodicals which take them out of circulation; I seem to have my seasonal academitis, with the same effect. But enough of that; your letters have, as Marianne would say, beautifully sustained me. And I mean it!

Susan has been in Salt Lake City for the past week at a national flower club show, and I drive to La Guardia to pick her up this evening at 8:PM. "Normally she would come back by train, but her plane arrives just enough off

2

off-beat, so that if she were to go in to New York she would hardly be home
before midnight. Next week she has to go to upper New York State for a
competition in arranging roses, so I presume we will not move to the shore until
after she returns. The truth is that up to three days ago it has been so cold
(nighttime temperatures in the 40°s) that we would hardly have wanted to in any
event. Now suddenly it is summer, and some 60° in the night, and 80° in the
daytime. However the flowering shrubs have been lovely, so nature has at least
condoled with bouquets.

I went to New York on Tuesday, got the page proofs of Beowulf, and had a
session with the Wolves among other appointments. Beowulf has been announced
for publication in late August, but we now think better to hold until after
Labor Day, which comes on the 3rd, since reviews before that time would be lost
in the suffle of people returning from their summer homes and holidays. I decided
to distribute the type for Player's Boy since we have somewhat over a thousand
copies still on hand, and can print again from photo-offset if we have to. I
am still holding type (which means paying storage) on October and Roman Wall, since
there are only 500 copies left of each from their reprints, and it is just
possible that Beowulf might sell a few of each. As you know, they far outsold
Player's Boy, chiefly, I think, because the ending seemed so abrupt to the taste
of your audience; and a great pity this is, because the book in many ways has
your best writing in it.

We are thinking now of bringing out *Gate to the Sea* a year from this autumn,
which will give us a chance to go over it this September when you come, or for
you to work over the very final section after they begin to descend from the temple
for their final departure. The shore scene, it seemed to me, could be firmed up
a little, but you will decide this for itself. I do not think that Collins should
bring it out first, for copyright reasons, but there is no reason why we cannot
have simultaneous publication as we should be having once they catch up. The book
will have to be dolled up a little to give it a tiny bit more bulk, and I have
suggested tentatively (and want your opinion) that perhaps we might include two
or three photographs of Paestum which Islay could take. Kurt wants some drawings
of appropriate articles from Paestum for the beginning of each chapter, and when
Pup told me that Kenneth could draw beautifully when he wished to, it seemed to
me that the wealth of heaven had descended on me. For what could be nicer than
a book in which you and the Patesumites joined in this way. Do I hear a woof!
Better not say anything to them, because Kurt knows nothing of Kenneth's ability
and I should want to clear it with him lest some disappointment should ensue if he
insisted on other plans.

Everything seems to be in order with the Freud. What I want now, and Hilda
seemed willing, is that Heydt should discover some chi-chi photographer in Zurich
for a photograph of her which could be sent out to the reviewers. Not to be
included with the book. For some reason she doesn't like Islay's photos of her,
which I should like to have used. No point in arguing, altho Islay may be a little
hurt. I think we will not use the Egyptian ones of Kat; they are too far back,
and, zwischen uns, would detract from the emphasis on Freud.

The Wandharan books progresses reasonably well, although Ingholt like all
academics works slowly. But the lay out is done (except for my arbitration with
Islay, who like all artists does not see the academic problem in certain arrangements)
the catalogue is nearly completed, and he is about to begin the introduction. Islay
has sent such a fine photograph of himself to be used, that I think I will have
Lotte Jacobi do one of Ingholt so that the two can be in balance.

3

Alas, the gentlemen from Grove Press suddenly took off for Paris. They publish *Godot*, and want to get another book from him while the publicity is up. We plan to meet in a fortnight when they return. Horace's letter about "Helen" is so fine that I want to quote it to you (I have sent Kat a copy):

Dear Norman:

Helen in Egypt is one of the very, very few superlative long poems of the 20th century. It is of great originality and beauty. H.D.'s Selected Poems should be published first as preparation for Helen in Egypt — try to work out a proper timing schedule.

The poem, marvelously sustained as it is, sags only in the group of stanzas introducing Theseus; Hilda has a little trouble here that she should work out herself; the middle and latter treatment of the Theseus theme is excellent and convincing, full of surprises that are exactly right. There is little doubt that the poem is Hilda's masterpiece.

What could be nicer than that? Except perhaps what she wrote me after receiving the jacket of the Freud and a letter from Horace: "I think I did get what I was looking for, from life and art — thanks to you and Bryher." Shall we wag our tails?

By the way, I received in today's post from Paris, a copy of Alain Bosquet's ANTHOLOGIE DE LA POESIE AMERICAINE, published by Librairie Stock, 6 rue Casimir-Delavigne, Paris 6th which has in it a poem by Hilda ("Hesperides") in English and in translation, for which I gave them permission. Will you order one for her from some local bookseller, or in Zurich. I imagine she will want to see. Of course they may have sent her one anyhow. Better inquire.

The various packages of letters and books etc have been coming in steadily, and up until this afternoon I have been employing my bursary student in putting them away in the filing cabinets, or as indicated. Only a fey few remain to be done. Everything has arrived from Maggs except for the bundle with *Hippolytus* and Edith's manuscripts, but I am sure they will be along shortly. For all, my thanks of course. The Amy Lowells will go on the shelf with the others from her; the *View* I am delighted to have because I had to give my set to the library when we got the correspondence file of the magazine (without a set). And Hilda's books go into the reserve stock. The letters I have variously looked at. Cole's delight me, simply because of their liveliness and intentional shock value; Bear's become important additions to the set from you to him which we already had; I howled with glee at your interplanetary courtships from the two young men: it makes me want to turn into a space ship and fly to your arms; and so it goes. But these are better to talk about en route to Maine (the letters, I mean; not your paws).

I am delighted that Gladys is with you at last. Greet her for me, and tell her that I shall be getting at her ms early in July. For something like that I must be fresh and unhurried. It was bad news, however, to hear of Gerald's stroke, a thing which is particularly frightening to me under the circumstances. And of course, sad too about Molly Hughes whose book I thought was a classic as well as a true documentary. But as you say, under the circumstances it was something of a blessing.

Now as to September, and your query. About dates. It is hard to say. So much depends. Naturally from my point of view the 1st was perfect. That meant we could have a toast in your honor, say in New York, on the 2nd; and have the

4

10th well prepared for. I saw Pup and John Tuesday afternoon, and had a drink with them in the garden. My impression was that they had their summer

(interruption at this point while I had to go over the copy for the American Studies Bulletin; and it being 4:45 P.M., I shall have to quit and begin my drive to Laguardia Field). Will pick up again tomorrow morning.)

home until the 14th of September, a customary period beginning the 14th of June, in order that the lessor can get, and insist on, a three month rental period. For the sake of the boys and the new baby they hoped to stay as long as possible there. New York schools for Nicholas and Valentine do not begin until late September, and of course it is better for them to have a lawn to play on, and for the baby to have country air to breath. But I told them, it didn't matter: they should stay, and we could drive out to see them. The only matter was that of the birthday, which might take on huger proportions if one had to drive to Long Island to celebrate with them. Or we could have it here in New Haven, and the others could drive here, or perhaps best of all we could meet in New York for supper. I still see some advantages in your coming as scheduled: Kat could have a flying (not overnight) visit to the grandchildren on Long Island, and then flee back to New York. She could have a day or two of prowling (the Cloisters, the Met, etc) at her own pace; and most of all we could arrange with Prutting to see her, and give her her run-through before the Schaffner's return to New York. Then, if anything emerged, it would not conflict with Hilda's sudden desire to return to safety in Küssnacht. I suspect once the Schaffners are back in New York at their home, Hilda will soon become exhausted.

However, the 10th is not a magic date except for the birthday. Since Hilda will not officially have opened, there will probably not be any great shindig to mark the unveiling, and I rather think this would upset Hilda anyhow. I thought of her creeping in to see it once or twice, and then you and she and Susan and I retiring for a little gloat. Don't you think, knowing our Hilda, that it would be too much to ask her to officiate at an opening? I have kept insisting on the incog aspects of her visit to the States.

Perdita looked well and in excellent spirits, her complexion good. I believe the baby will be induced next Wednesday. By the way, if you or Hilda want to send over something personal for the new one, I have an idea. John showed me with great pride a quasi-Victorian rocking cradle they had been given, so that they would not have to use such energy, as with Nicholas, in lifting and lowering the mattress of his crib in order to soothe him. At any rate, a little embroidered coverlet, or linen for this might be fun: and the Swiss do such nice work with it. The mattress of the cradle is 16" x 33¼", and translated into metres should be enough for any infant's shop to go by. The two boys were chanting. Nicky greeted me with the usual "what have you brought for us," but when I said "nothing" he did not wail. Valentine has become very manlike, and has dropped the elaborate bowing and scraping in the earlier courtly fashion. And better so, under the circumstances. Staying in school for lunch and the afternoon has made the difference. He eats anything now, and informed John that the teachers had to go home at 4:30 afternoons, so that was why the students came home then. They look forward to their summer home, and Pup hopes to join them in three weeks more or less. I don't think we have to worry about Perdita and the delivery. I am sure all will go well.

5

Your letter of the 7th was miraculously here this morning, so I can include
that amongst the ones to be answered.

The Bedford and Wilsons have not come, but Hilda's early manuscripts have.
At least, "The Greek Boy" and "Monsieur's Princess." As has Perdita's "Two
Christmases" which she wrote for you. I have not had a chance to read them, but
will try to do so this weekend. Still have two dissertations in process, with
drafts to go over so the men can continue to work. Fortunately the other two
dissertations I am directing, I am up to date on.

And sorry to have delayed with Gladys's manuscript, but the first paragraph
of the letter will have explained. And there are the manuscripts of two full
length novels to be gone over, that have been sent me by former students; Kenneth's
still to finish; four scholarly articles that have been sent me for comment (I do
not count the pile of offprints and books sent to me with inscriptions, which must
be acknowledged). Plus the manuscript dissertation of a student in Denmark. And
so it goes. It is really overwhelming. Last summer it took three months simply
to get up to date.

Back to your letter of the 7th: Yes, better for Hilda to be in Lugano for
January and February, and on the whole for the summer months; but so long as she
give you a modicum of freedom. Heydt has his weaknesses, but Hilda both craves
and needs the sort of devoted attention he gives to her (for whatever reasons),
and since her needs are not physical, and she can disentangle herself from too
pressing a relationship with him (as she has), I think we can both be very grateful.
I wonder though how he will fit in under the new regime. But let us not cross that
bridge until we come to it.

As to Japan, it sounds like a happy idea: but definitely for the spring rather
than the fall. As Islay also prefers. I must have made real headway with my
Hawthorne project before Susan and I could join you; though you ought not to alter
your plans simply because of us. It is not at all important that we should go;
and there will be other years when we can fit it in, should Kenneth and Islay
prefer to go out with you, or join you in the fall. I do like your idea of seeing
Australia.

Your bit of ms, as you call it, which I take to be the essay on your schoolgirl
reunion, I spoke of in my letter of the 3rd, or the earlier one. I forget which.
It was not lost.

Delighted about the Closeup blocks. If Mr Newhall, whom I saw in Rochester
last week, does not reply soon, let me know. I will in any event write him that
he has been written to by you. And the Borderline should by all means come here.
I was thinking of Rochester only if we had several copies made.

The Bedford and Wilson have not arrived, but I daresay will.

Don't forget the Presbyterian articles of Hilda's, which I must have for
the checklist. And, could you drop a note to Collins and ask them to send me
another copy of their edition of Roman Wall. Trying thru a friend to push it for
an Italian movie, I gave him the English edition, thinking I had another copy at
my office; but it was a second English copy of October instead.

6

I spoke with the *Wolves* about Christian and his plans for next year. You remember that you and I had agreed to help him at Harvard since he would not have his Woodrow Wilson fellowship because of the year abroad. He has been given a $900 scholarship by Harvard, which would only cover tuition, and leave nothing for living or books. Kurt said he felt the parents should support him, and was quite strong about this. But when I suggested that we might give him and Helen a gift, they could pay some other bills out of this, and thus release money which could then go to Christian. He laughed but I think would be willing. I do see his point (you will recall that we did the same circumlocution for Patrick Gregory, by letting the money come to him as from his family), and think it much preferable to let the *Wolves* have their pride, and to let Christian feel an obligation to them. So shall I send one thousand, which would mean that they actually could put in 600 of their own (which should do it nicely), or do you think 1500$. I rather think the former. There is money in the account to cover this, I feel sure.

As I told you, I could pick up nothing about Tolkien's conversion; and rather doubt it. If you go to Oxford to see Masefield, you might just ring Tolkien's doorbell and beard him that way. I doubt he would answer a letter.

I do think you have been wise both with your English holdings and Hilda's, to take the loss and then have Benay slowly recoup with manipulable funds. The only possibility for keeping abreast these days is by capital gains: taxes on income are so high that one is simply held in a straightjacket. At least I know how sorry I am not to have had a little capital to invest in order to make the gains on it; fluctuations even up or down adjust themselves better than living on a fixed salary can do. That is why I suggested the Johnson shares for the Hotsons.

Am back now to a letter of the 17th April. Wish Susan and I could have flipped over for a respite after little susan's wedding but of course this was improbable.

Nothing any good has come out recently in science fiction. At this state, am letting Susan screen the offerings for you. With all your flipping during the summer, I will probably just stock ahead for your visit in September.

The political situation is as stereotyped for the moment as a third-rate science fiction novel: the same old gambits, it would appear. Though I do think there is considerable significance, of a sort, in the degrading of Stalin. Mostly to do with Tito, quasi-externally, but internally little more than a way of making the present triumphant (so to speak) seem honorable and justified, without any real concern for legality except as it affects their own situation. The illegality of their holding of Poland, for example, does not come in, nor the illegality of their remaining in Hungary, despite their treaties, etc. I do not, in other words, think it changes the basic situation very much.

The news of Eisenhower's operation is distressing, but chiefly because it will be ballooned into a significance it does not deserve. He will bounce around again long before the election. Still, I am sorry.

The situation in Gardner apparently remains the same, although because of the pressures I have not been home since the beginning of April. Two weeks ago, when I heard from my mother, she reported a bad spell with the doctors thinking my father could not survive. But he did, and her last letter simply did not mention him. I have really said all that I have to say, long since. Now one does wish for his release; and with it, as a consequence, their release too.

All love, Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

16 June 1956

Dearest Fido:

Spring slipped out almost before it was seen, and it has
been full summer now for several days. Temperatures in the 90°s and
very little air. I am sitting now in my office with my shirt off, and
wish the proprieties let me cast off a little more. At the moment I
am deep in trying to write the 16000-word history of American literature
which is due today for something called the Encyclopedia Americana, and
was supposed to have been done by Professor Williams had he not died.
I should prefer to do something else, but plug away. Have about 3500
words written on the 17th century, and hope to have finished the 18th
century before tonight. We moved to the shore last night, and the
welcome of a breeze off the water. But send all letters to the office
address; at the shore there is but one delivery a day: here there are
four.

I suggested *The Gate* only because the *Wolves* asked me
about it, having been pressured for it by Collins. And as I have said
before, I do not think it would wise to let Collins have a prior
publication at this time. I may be wrong but I think the *Wolves* would
be hurt, and of course the whole question of copyright would become
involved in the necessary financial manipulations. We can talk this
over in September when you come, or later if that must be. (We have
tickets to go down the Mississippi on October 20th, but that will take
only ten to fourteen days altogether.) I had simply not realized that
*Ruan* was so nearly done that only the last 30 pages needed to be written.
The *Wolves* of course would prefer *Ruan* first, but I was going on the
assumption that you had not yet reworked out all the kinks in the earlier
sections and transitions once they had gotten to the island. You will
remember our agreement about this as from our several discussions.
But *Ruan* it is shall be, and you certainly do want to be working on it
while your notes are fresh in your mind. The prospect is most encouraging.

As to the fall trip, and your visit here, better, I think, simply
to wait for a little and see how things work out. At any event, don't
give up your passage until the last possible moment.

I had a letter from Beaumont Newhall, of Eastman House, en-
closing a copy of your letter to him, and asking me a question or two
about customs fees before he replied. Although you asked him to write to
Blakeston, and he will probably do that. So it looks as though all that
would be in order. And the things can be packed at any time now. I have
written him this morning. As to the copy of *Borderline* your idea of
having Leslie bring it over is a splendid one, and would solve many problems
both of shipping and of the customs. By all means do so.

I am terribly sorry to hear the continued bad news about
Gerald, and wish there was something I could do for him. Would there be
any point in our buying from him (it could be done as from me) any corres-

pondences, one way or the other, that he might still have from Violet Hunt's estate. It is all part of the picture of course, and I have always wondered what became of Ford's letters to her. I daresay they should be preserved, but perhaps they are in Golding's hands. You might ask.

I had a letter from Urzidel, enclosing some German reviews of his translation of Avon that Hilda had asked me to forward to him. He told me of his cerebral hemmorrhage and the cancellation of his trip abroad. He and poor Prescott! But I worry more about him. It's hard to know what to do, but perhaps I can get out to see him sometime this summer and try to get the lay of the land. I'd suggest a few weeks in the country for them, but perhaps the doctor wants to keep an eye on him close at hand.

It seems to be at every hand. I suppose you saw in the papers that "Our Tom" had had to be taken off the Queen Mary in a wheelchair, and taken to a hospital in London, because of a heart attack suffered on his return to England. I am a little worried, because he had a little attack or two while he was in the States, although of course this is strictly entre nous. The doctors made him be very careful. He has what they call tachycardia, which is an occasional speeding up of the heart and can be alleviated by drugs. His sister-in-law, who lives in Cambridge, has it too. It is said not be serious, but who knows. At any rate it is exhausting during its onset.

The Angus Wilson came yesterday, and I shall look forward to reading it. The other has not yet arrived. The only missing, or delayed, package now is Maggs' shipment of 24.5.56, with Edith's mss and the two copies of Hippolytus. I shall let you know later if they still have not come, so there will be time for you to ask them to check if that is necessary before you leave England for Switzerland again.

Did I tell you to look at a copy of *Life* for 4 June? It has a full page picture of what is obviously Lethbridge's chalk figure in it, and a rather "official" statement beneath: "On a chalk slope in Cambridge-shire England, archaeologists uncovered a strange configuration and started a scientific uproar. Discoverers believed it was the head of an 1800-year-old goddess, but pending further excavation, other experts would lend no support to this theory." One might have predicted this from L's letters.

I added another canvass to my collection of "Art for the Wrong Reasons," buying on spec from London for 35 pounds a painting by A.E. of children playing on the dunes by the Irish Sea. It has just come and is being framed. It is actually quite appealing, an example of the mild impressionist school at the end of the century, and a little mystical. I am eager for you to see it.

A dog? The heat must have made my rhetoric mad. I need nothing but my Fido to care for.

No word from Pup or John, so I must have gotten the birthweek wrong.

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

18 June 1956

Dearest Bryher:

A Monday morning note to announce the arrival of the package from Maggs, including the two copies of *Hippolytus* and the slipcase of Edith's manuscripts. I took a quick peek at the latter. Very exciting! Obviously the surest way to have made them reach their destination was to worry you at their delay in getting here. At any rate, Maggs need not be notified, and we can both rest in peace.

Also out of Montreux was the Fletcher, *Father's Own Son*, a very nice copy indeed, with good margins and clean. Was there a second one sent also? I type this before scurrying back to my little lit'ry hist'ry, and do not want to take the time to look up your letter about it.

The weather, blessed be the saints that protect us, has shifted, and yesterday and today have been cool, with a nice breeze. Even so, yesterday when I worked at the office, my shirt off and a fan running at a safe distance, I dripped sweat like a workhorse. I only pray you have decent weather on your various voyages to how many fair isles and fair aisles! Do write me faithfully en route, for I can begin my leave of absence vicariously through you while still working at my arrears.

Hilda seems contented with Heydt, and their new tea shop.
I do not worry about her, really, in that connection: she knows how to
pull out at the awkward points. But meanwhile he does manage to fill
the need she has for constant attention (a natural enough need), and in
that way does free you for those trips you must make in connection with
your writing and your other responsibilities.

I note your wishes in regard to Christian Wolff for next year, and will take care of them. I do think he is a little foolish not to have accepted the Gough's suggestion that he travel in Turkey with their friend. Don't misunderstand me if I say that a little sand is as good an experience for a classicist as simply another music festival may be. I sometimes wonder if Americans are not becoming over-cultivated at the loss of their frontier vigor. Think of the excitement of the imagination from seeing these Anatolian ruins!

But enough of that. I must get back to my article, of which
I have now written almost a half.

All greetings to the various circles, and all love to
yourself.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 June 1956

Dearest Bryher:

Just a hurried note, at night, and in the midst of my
literary history, to say that John called me last night to tell of
Perdita's daughter, and that I spoke with her by phone this morning
and that she sounded well and happy. She had so dearly wanted to have
a girl, that I think she still does not entirely believe it's true.
She had seen Elisabeth Bryher again this morning, and found her head
of black hair enchanting, though a little unsure of what the child
would eventually look like. I ought to add another twosome to their
store of enjoyment, which both she and John repeated when I saw them
last and again last night and today. (1) that they at last had a
"Bryher" (which I never think of as either a girl's name or a boy's,
but yours); and (2) that Doris would be a godmother. So of course
you must come over for the ceremonies, and you and I can hold hands
and snort in the background.

Your letter of the 18th arrived this morning. I am so
sorry there was no letter from me for you at Kusnacht, but I did not
quite dare risk it, when I could write, and so you will have had it and
another at Lowndes. But I shall write, never fear from now on, and the
letters can simply accumulate in London until your return. It was only
these past two months that have been impossible. Now I begin to get my
energy back, despite the incredible weather, and I have been writing like
a beaver. 10,000 words or more, so far, since the end of last week. I
only wish they were better ones.

The report on what Rudolph is doing at Kusnacht sounds
encouraging, and, as I wrote you in one of my last letters, we can be
thankful if Hilda is happy there. The changes may in time make it seem
like a new place to her, and perhaps even to you; or at least it can be
tolerable for a few days at a time so long as you know the in-betweens
are taken care of. Hilda's nervosität because of her traumatic exper-
iences at the other births is understandable -- the last time she felt
as though she herself had been carrying Nicky, and that her operation was
a kind of Caesarian delivery. Now that the third is out, she will feel
better.

I enclose a letter from Liveright (destroy) which seems to
set things straight at long last. I am surprised and pleased at their
reluctant agreement to a switch. I think they must have consulted lawyers,
the delay has been so long; and am glad I was on firm legal grounds before
writing them. I shall put it to Hilda, pro forma, but know what she will
say. Better not mention to her until I write; for my letter to her tonight
kept simply to the child and my talk with Pup.

All love, though you know you carry that with you always.

9 July 1956

Dearest Bryher:

A muggy and impossible day, but I can stand it a
little better for having at last sent off, on Saturday, the copy
for the article on American literature for the encyclopedia. I
might have been able to improve it, on innumerable re-writings,
but it hardly seemed worthwhile. Now I can get on to a few more
of the chores to be done before I settle in on Hawthorne. No good
putting off "big tasks"; they had better be cleaned up; while little
ones can be done in intermissions.

Two letters in today from you, after an interim. One
from Kirkwall, the other from the Orkneys. Your trip sounded superb.
It will give you the sense of things; and obviously you had the best
kind of company. It is important for Doris to have all these trips
while it is still possible for her to see at all. How wonderful it
will be for her to see E-B and stand as godmother. Pup and John are
so much looking forward to seeing her.

Enthusiastic letters from Hilda, who seems in fine
spirits. I think you can count on having the summer quite free, and
leave her in Heydt's hands. I saw Pup and the baby last Tuesday when
I went to New York to see the Grove Press people, and subject to change
the program for September appears to be as follows. A little party--
of yourself, Hilda, Doris, the Schaffners, Susan and I--on the 10th,
either in New York in their garden; or in New Haven if Hilda feels like
rushing up for the exhibition. But no big reception here for her, lest
she take fright. Doris will spend as long as the Schaffners are on Long
Island with them, so as not to get in Hilda's hair, and afterwards will
be having her medical checkups. Pup and I thought perhaps the christening
could be in the Schaffner's garden, so that it would not be such a pro-
duction for Hilda, and she (plus any combination) could slip out as
indicated. We can fit in the Maine excursion as you think best, unless
under circumstances of Hilda being here you want to put that off for a
year. Hilda will meanwhile be kept busy going over copy for the selected
poems. She knows about this and is planning on it. It actually works
out very well. Prutting can be worked in as fitted; Pup and I plan per-
haps to have him come over for tea, or to see baby, and meet Hilda, having
been briefed properly. You will see how well everything will go; but I
think 3 weeks for Hilda will be enough, unless something happens.

If we go to Maine, we might stop en route and see Gwynn's
carving. Might be fun.

Was delighted with Marya's story of Edith, and "the equiva-
lent of a Lady" was beautifully established. One can't be angry, but it
is, shall we say, a little pathetic even if understandable. That Faith

2

should have been alive to see you at all is something of a miracle. How dreadful for her to have to suffer in this way. Glad of the news from Monty.

Packages of letters in, as well as the London Magazine (for which thanks), and the manuscript score of Hilda's music. Oddly enough, she wrote me she had just been in communication with the composer.

Did I write you that Bobby Locker had died? I presume his boy friend will carry on the shop, in case we ever make another visit.

I had a letter from Mrs Hodgson. "I promised to write how things go at home. The winter was long, damp and cheerless to the bones. The furnace has been only a few weeks. Ralph has experienced some decline of physical energy. Five or ten years ago he used to find the household chores(coal, ashes, garbage and the like) producing felicities of word and line. This past winter the ashes mostly stayed in the cellar until I got home and he asked for help to get a bucket of coal over the threshold or to get a small article from a low shelf. All in the course of nature, I suppose, but not easy for either of us to get used to.

"Thanks to the generosity of our benefactor, our house is unusually well supplied with weekly papers from England--porvincial, Scotch, London, critical, political, general--even weekly packets of Daily Mails. This past week Mr H has been sorting them and looking through them again, because some must go to an outbuilding, where he proposes to keep them and go back to them ten years from now as history. The snag is that somehow or other, rush, dust and moisture seem to gather on them and they become so bedraggled."

"The inner tone of my husband's mind-- his response to the events of each week and the prospects for the future-- is deeply pessimistic. (I have just been reading Schweitzer's "Out of My Thought," and there are resemblances.) But his pleasure in our hills, and the lavish bloom on the Philadelphus, and the genius of Bortnianski--he whistles strains of Jubilate many times a day -- are also facts of daily experience."

I liked it. One begins to get hints about her from it.

I enclose a clipping from the local newspaper which amused me. It isn't specifically stated whether the portrait of Eisenhower is also in the nude, and therefore " a very healthful picture for the Republican party."

Have been in touch with Sylvia, and will see her before she goes.

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

1 August 1956

Dearest Bryher:

Well, it was a good trip; and we got back safely; and now I start the new month with a letter to you, and I think each of us will be back on the track after all this gadding. I work at the accumulated mass on my desk--going away doesn't help at all; all that happens is that more comes -- without being able to start Hawthorne yet. That will come.

The trip is a saga in itself. Let me do the little businesses first, and take the trip perhaps tomorrow. All new letters put away, for which thanks. It was Edith who made the season fair for me: with your tale, via Marya, of the dameable rebuke. It really is amusing, and Marya took it in stride. But I will admit what would seem parvenu, did one not realize how desperately (I mean this) Edith is emotionally compensating for her defeat by David. I think especially of her delight in quoting the answer to the unbelievably stupid American woman; for she should recognize a crackpot when she sees one. One sees, of course, all too clearly what drove Edith into the arms of the church; and alas for that, since she will ask from Rome what it cannot give her. Susan and I both roared with delight at the account of the interview between Dame Edith and Babe Marilyn. It is a true classic; every biography eventually will repeat it. I'm delighted in it, really like Edith for it, was pleased with the reporting and the choice of photographs: dour damehood in juxtaposition with Aphrodite. And really Marilyn must be that, though I have never pinned her nude on the walls of my desire or memory!

Thanks too for the galley sheets of the L&L articles by you.
They are safely filed, as you will see.

Alice Astor's death I see you know of through Edith. I rather liked her on the few times I met her: in London and New York, and once when she came to our house for lunch with Edith. I am particularly sorry for Edith's sake, since it may make a difference to the American trips. As you know, Mrs Bouverie always paid for the hotel rooms, at least on the early visits. But somehow I suspect we will not be seeing Edith on this side for a time at least, all this notwithstanding. Did you know Lorna Linsey from Paris days, --the American woman? She too has died.

For the sake of following-up, I enclose the new cover for the Republican Program, with two stalwart jawbones taking the place of the nudes. And the first formal release on the Ka'riye Djami (which I shall have to learn to respell. I have a hunch we will be seeing colored reproductions soon in Life, perhaps when you are on this side.

Thanks also for the art books (most useful for my American Studies
work), and for the copy of Osbert's "Dick Whittington."

All seems to go well at Pantheon. A letter from Helen says that
copies of Hilda's book will be ready now, so we need only wait for the day
when the *Freud* and the *Beowulf* are published. That you like the *Beowulf* now

2

that is actually in print, delights me of course. I can hardly wait for
what Prescott will say. Now what about the copies you want to send out?
Since you'll be here about publication date would you prefer to wait and
inscribe copies, or not bother. And what about Sylvia? A copy now, and
a dedicated copy on your arrival. No reason why she shouldn't have both.
At any rate, make out your list and send to me with whatever directions
you wish.

Your idea of a Scillonian Beo is simply superb. I am most excited;
for you know how to wrinkle your nose at these sort of people (while loving
them at the same time), and you do have a gift for comedy. "on't say you
haven't! That's why we can giggle together on our trips."

A letter came in from a young teacher in the middle-west who is
doing a bibliography of Contact Publishing Co. and Three Mountains Press,
and was referred to me by Victoria McA. Actually I did have everything on
his list of Contact, except *The Herdboy* (1926) by H. Krebs Friend. Is there
a copy at Kenwin? Needn't be, of course, since this is post-Robert. When
I said everything, I didn't include the two Hemingways and Ezra's XVI Cantos,
but these are in the library and I never thought it worth buying for the sake
of duplicates. Three questions I couldn't answer for certain, and perhaps
you can (out of memory). Nothing in R's letters to you, or others, to set
the dates. *Was Post-Adolescence* and *A Companion Volume* each published in
1923. They have no dates in the books. Nor does *A Hasty Bunch*. You may
be able to associate them with some other event which you *can* date. I'd like
to help the young men, and scholarship if we can. Perhaps Sylvia will know.
Also what was the title of John's book, which Bobbie wrote me he had published,
and the date?

All this confusion without documentation makes me feel that we ought
to be sure of the bibliographical material and lists for Pool and for Brendan.
What do you think of my writing Kenneth and Herring for these. (By the way,
Herring's letters seem a little better, though terribly subdued. There is
nothing one can do, of course, and little would be gained by trying.)

The accounts of the trip sounded like fun, despite the weather and the
inevitable brevity of your letters. I feel as cut off from you as you must have
felt from me. Thank God we needn't look forward to a continuance of this. I
do count so much on hearing regularly and fully from you.

I long for the poem.

Glad that you made your Masefield pilgrimage. I have no fears about
RUAN, and only do not want you to work at it without the spirit moving you in
that direction. One can only see what August will bring forth, and the winter.
At any rate, there is no hurry.

You speak of eyes reading what you write to me in letters. None but
mine, except for the ordinary letters which I often take home for Susan to
read. The boy never read any of them; I always file yours myself. So that
the account of your rendezvous with M was mine alone. I think you do understand
her, and the combination of her natural admiration and affection (after all,
you have remained yourself over all these years, have in your own sure way
achieved a creativity which will be infinitely more permanent than the fading
life of theatrical roles from one of which to another Martita has had to turn
at the expense of her own individuality--that is the tragedy of actresses and
actors), and the fear that she has of the future, both of loneliness and of

3

financial insecurity when there are no roles left to play except that of being yesterday's actress. Rub noses with her, but don't let yourself become too involved; for you will find her independently dependent and perhaps even demanding; and what you need least of all at this moment is another demander. And you do have love: Hilda's, Perdita's, mine (if I may); and affection and gratitude. And I want you to write, to fulfill all these potentialities in you which a lifetime has been developing so richly despite all the knocks and tensions.

Have not heard from Gregory after his return from Nova Scotia, but expect to in a few days, and we will then make the selections for Hilda's new volume. Do not worry about her when she is on this side. I shall keep her busy with the texts of the poems, and the last touches for "Helen," and other small businesses to which I think she looks forward, and which will give her the excuses for privacy she needs. She will be my and Pup's responsibility.

Gwyn's carving will definitely be on our list of things to do, and will give us a chance for new corners of New England you have not seen. If you like, we can stop off to see my mother en route. Actually the longer we are together, the more you stamm ausardner too. A letter from the Hotsons (how nice of them) invites Susan and me to Sorrento after your visit. We shall not go of course, though I will leave it vague for the moment, but we were touched at having been asked. They seem reasonably prepared for your going or not going as the circumstances may warrant. I gather Leslie is hard at work on his book.

Haven't had a chance to begin Wendy's book since my return, though I look forward to it. Gather the reviews have been reasonably favorable, and that it should have a continued sale to trippers or ex-trippers.

Poor O.B. Another case of the overhanging womb. Will he never be free of his mama?

I was surprised to hear that Maggs thought it better to send out the Hentys now. I had not realized, though the recent election reports (and of course all this frightful business in the Mediterranean) make it look like a possible shift in the majority. It all seems so hopeless.

Stupid of Collins not to like Beowulf, but am I right in thinking the British have never been inclined towards novels of the middle and lower-middle classes. I am thinking of how no line followed Arnold Bennett's stories of the five towns (The Old Wive's Tales was really good you know); not even Bennett himself followed it. Galsworthy is a quite different kettle of fish. Actually, if one were to speak of "documentation" for another age, material like that in Beowulf will be cherished. That's what I meant in my blurb, about the future's finding yours a source book. Why does the material of Virginia Woolf seem more appealing to Britishers than the material of Dorothy Richardson? (I'm not talking about the "writing", which isn't the full difference.) We'll have to gab about this. Anyway, I think it's relevant to Collins' attitude toward your book. Their remarks about The Gate will show you how all the discussion with Pantheon about it arose.

Had better close before you are completely exhausted.

All love, and keep the tail up!

Lorann

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

3 August 1956

Dearest Fido:

I have no idea how intelligible this map will be, but it may help to outline our cruise. We had a nice comfortable boat--you'll see it in September--broad-beamed, squat in the water though it will heel in a high wind, a comfortable cabin with two bunks for the owner and wife, and, forward, two coffin-shaped wedges, as hard as board, for the guests. We started out from Johnson's Point in a good wind late in the morning and sailed as far as New London that evening. (New London, on the Thames, is not particularly attractive as a harbor, but the big submarine base is there, and it is fun to watch them file in at dusk, and out again for manouevres the next morning. On the second day we did nothing but sail, not briskly but with that pleasant sense of its not mattering how far one does get, and that one is really "off", so that a wave of the hands to other boats comes with an exchanged token of freedom. We put it at dusk at Point Judith, running up the river to the little fishing village of Galilee (a nice name) across from Jerusalem, filled with fishing smacks and the ripe stench of their harvests. We lay outside, behind the breakwater, not far from a newly-wrecked fisherman, torn in two when the master, tired, mistook the lights and ran it smackeroo on the rocks. We made ballads in the manner of the Hesperus of Longfellow's poem, pondering the moral. The next morning we sailed for Cuttyhunk, where Gosnold planted a settlement in 1602, a charming little island (the last of the Elizabeths) with a harbor-pond which was crammed with great boats from the Cruising Club to the delight of the Canadian geese who swim around like swans having domesticated themselves there. En route we watched the manouevres of destroyers, an aircraft carrier, and innumerable jets, who displayed themselves for the sake of a British destroyer which we later learned was full of the highest naval and diplomatic brass. Leaving Cuttyhunk we sailed to Penikese, the little island I wrote about in reference to Agassiz and his summer school there, and landed in the skiff to explore the waste moors now inhabited only by gulls and tums, feeling very much like Gosnold himself. And after that to Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, where again we lay over in a harbor filled with elegant yawls and ketches. The next morning we stopped at Oak Bluffs, a lower-middle class summer resort symbolized by Methodist tabernacles but made useful by its good stores for provisions and supplies, and, because a bad Saturday was promised by the weather man, headed straight for Nantucket, where the Cruising Club was having a rendezvous, but one we could escape. Saturday did drizzle, but we took a car and explored Nantucket from one end to the other, along beaches and across the moors, until late afternoon when I left the others to go to the whaling museum and went myself to the birthplace of Maria Mitchell (a 19th-century lady astronomer of repute), who travelled with the Hawthornes from Paris to Rome, and left a journal which I examined and indicated what I wanted copied, thus salving my conscience for having taken so many days out from my work. Saturday night

2

was a downpour, but we sat in the cabin and played cards and didn't
mind at all. Sunday was foggy, but at noon it cleared enough for us
to set out for Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard again, where we anchored
and sat out a pea fog that lasted until late the next morning, whereupon
there being not much wind we got no farther that night than Oak Bluffs
once more, where we restocked our victuals and our gasoline. The next
day we sailed to WoodsHole where we tried to go ashore to see the marine
laboratories, but it was too rough, so we slipped through the islands
and anchored at Quisset, nearalmouth, a tiny harbor surrounded by
great estates, and made lively by innumerable very small boats sailed by
youngsters. Wednesday we sailed for Newport, and had our roughest weather,
the boat standing on end most of the time, and before we had finished we
had torn off the jobsheet and split some of the rigging. Thursday, then,
meant taking the sail to be mended and having to lie over while it was
done, but in the afternoon we went out for a lazy sail around Narraganset
Bay, getting in close to Quonset (the great naval air base, especially for
jets, so that they zoomed us, hedgehopping a few hundred feet above the
mast as they came in and out of their airport. Friday morning it poured,
torrentially, but we motored the boat across the bay to Jamestown, where
our places on the boat were taken by two other friends of the Footes; we
took the car in which they came, and drove it back to Johnson's Point where
they in turn picked it up on Sunday.

Susan and I would have given anything to have had you along. But
see Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket you must some time, even if we fly there
for a weekend.

The card from Zurich, from Hilda and yourself, came the afternoon
after I mailed my last letter to you, and then three fat packages of letters
from London which will be duly filed away. Bit by bit my desktop becomes
visible. Clear it I must before I get down to "awthorne at last.

Beginning also to make definite plans for the Hildashow, and will
have to ask questions from time to time. But important for general reference
in future to get these things straight. You said that Hilda wrote most of
the Borderline pamphlet; did she do "Forewarned as regards H D's Prose",
the Contact brochure; and "Note on 'What happens' a novel by John Herrmann,"
another Contact brochure? If she didn't who did. You understand how much
easier this will make the record eventually; one doesn't have to label them
as such in the exhibition.

All love,

Lorann

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

6 August 1956

Dearest Fido:

Your Kusnacht letter came Saturday, and I look forward
to the ones from Aenwin, where a number from me should have been wait-
ing for you. Next time I shall take chances via Lowndes anyhow; but
your ausflug was unusually complicated this time.

I spoke to Pup on the phone, Saturday, despite a sudden
attack of larygitis in my throat, which made me literally croak; but
have waited until this morning to write you, since the letter from
Mrs Prescott had not arrived. Fortuntaley it has just come, along with
the others in the three pouches. The daughter's name is Jennifer; she
will be in Lausanne until the 27th of October, and she stays on pension
with one Mme René Galland, Avenue de Bethusy 52. She is nineteen. Obvi-
ously an invitation is indicated.

As to Hilda, I feel a little more optimistic about her com-
ing, so long as you do not seem to press her. Her indecision must be
maddening to you, for we both like sensible and orderly planning. But
we also know how special all this. I write to her as though she were
coming, and tempting with the selected poems which I think what is most
likely to fetch her. I doubt that Hilda was really indifferent about
her books, however she might have appeared; but I certainly understand
any number of stimuli to her concentration on them now. Part of it is
being seventy, part is having Rich treat her with awe as a poetess (and
she deserves this from all of us), part is a paradoxical jealousy of your
new place in the limelight (she is both terribly happy about this, and
unused to sharing praise), and partly because, the truth of the matter is,
many more requests for reprinting her poems are coming in, the Avon transla-
tion is really her first big step in another language, and after all too
there are three books about to appear or more or less scheduled: the Fraud,
the Selected, and probably Helen. And the exhibition. They are like a
series of highballs.

Now the plan is this: if Hilda comes, I drive to the airport
to pick her and you up and bring directly to New Haven, where I will put
Hilda at the Lawn Club with you, while Pup and John go to airport to take
Doris to their house. Then they drive to New Haven for the 10th, and a
little party, sans children for the birthdays (all three, yours being post-
poned); the Bridghampton group go back that night, and we more or less
assemble in New York as of the 15th when the Puplets return to town. This
interval we work on manuscripts (yours and Hilda's), and sniff the air for
plans thereafter. Perhaps better for Doris to stay at the Peekman in town
so that when Hilda runs over to Pup's she can sometimes feel the only center
there. The christening to be after the 15th in Pup's garden, with the doctor
as a guest. As George would say, I shall spin my wheel about the doctor.

If Hilda does not come, I shall meet you and bring you to New
Haven while they take Doris to Bridghampton, and we can drive from her for

2

for the 60th with them, since with Doris and yourself the children might
as well have the fun of joining in; and then you back with us again, unless
you want to stay on there. And into New York on the 15th.

Stimmt?

I was sorry that Edith will not be able to see you in Kenwin on the 2nd
October. The dirt might have been fun, but I expect you would have found
it a little exhausting. The whole situation is increasingly distressing,
but what can one do?

I was a little surprised at the warmth and enthusiasm of Herring's letter,
but you obviously did just the right thing in not ignoring his reference to
George, so that he could spill out on it. This is his best therapy, I think;
far better than the bottle or a Teddy Boy. I find it interesting from a psa.
point of view that, with George as with his Teddy Boy, he likes a friendship
of this sort with a half of a couple. A reluctance to avoid a complete commit-
ment with an individual?

I read Rose's letter with interest, since I had picked up Leon Edel's article
on Dorothy R. with enthusiasm, thinking how I should write him (he is a friend
of mine) thanking him for doing it. Of course I could not; it was completely
insensitive and left-handed hackwork. You might suggest to her that I think
Elizabeth Bowen could be persuaded to write sympathetically on D. We had a
long jaw about the neglect of her, and she was rather tempted by my urgings that
she do something.

Tell Hilda to tell Heydt that the first copies of Beowulf were most limited.
There was one for yourself (two rather, because of Kenwin), I took one, one
for Hilda, and one for Pup. I did not send to Sylvia, even, so that you could
wait until coming to sign one for her. You can tell Heydt I had planned that
for you to do for him.

And, my dearest "established name," I enclose a preview of the fall list from
yesterday's *Tribune*. Better not mention to Hilda, since her name was not
mentioned. The Selected Poems will be another matter, I am sure.

All love, and let the letters fly to me.

Norman

13 August 1956

Dearest Bryher:

An unlucky morning, so I shall change the tide
by writing to you. I started out this morning and got almost
to town from the shore, and discovered I had left my keys be-
hind. Had it been only office, it wouldn't have mattered; but
I had the laundry to take the Goodrich street house, and so had
to turn back. Have tried to begin a review of a very dull history
of American literature, and found myself writing too suitably
equivalent a discussion, so gave that up. Even my fingers seem
to hit the wrong key. I hope you won't suffer as a result.

Last week a busy one. I started it off on Sunday
by driving to Gardner to see my mother. (She was delighted to
have had your card from the Orkneys, or wherever it was). She
seems very lame, but her face is rested. Of course she goes out
hardly at all, and the house seems to run well, so I suppose she
actually is rested. A shift of nurses because of summer holidays,
and a new Finnish cook whom she likes, so that is fine. As for
my father I did notice a change in him: he lies so quietly now
that there was not a wrinkle in the bedspread or pillow: it was
like a modelled display for student nurses or hospital beds. He
eats less when fed now; and, I am glad to say, they have stopped
giving him daily doses of penicillin. When asked why he got it,
the doctor said: "to keep germs from hurting him." To which my
mother replied: "but can you wish him health?" I am glad at least
for that step. The whole thing is unbelievable.

Wednesday I went to Hartford for a meeting of the
trustees of the Mark Twain Memorial: the old house where he lived
from 1873-1890 which is being restored as nearly as possible to
what it was then. Friday night to a Syrian dinner at International
House, where I made my debut as president. Thursday devoted to a
hurried reading of the manuscript novel written by an old student of
mine, and "just sent for my opinion and help." He announced himself
as appearing at four. It was just as well; at least I got it done,
and didn't have to write him a letter. Needless to say it was no
good. Saturday afternoon taken up by a graduate student from Chicago,
who called long distance by phone, from White Plains, to say it was
his only chance to see me about John Gould Fletcher, ... and so ....

I enclose the newest excitement for your perusal. The
house where the robbery and near-murder took place is Leslie's and
Mary's. It was so bizarre when first announced over the radio that
I could only assume a terrific lie on the part of the husband. The
robber is a mental case, one supposes. I did not send these to Mary

3

so long as you have the trip to the States to think about. And remember that you have hardly stayed longer than three weeks at any one spot since you were here last November. I should not urge Lugano for Hilda, but be glad you can leave her at Kusnacht where you do not have to keep check on her. Her trip to the States, if she comes, will be a sufficient break at least until Christmas. For the holidays, if only for a fortnight, I think better Lugano.

As to your coming out now or later if Hilda does not come, you must of course decide that for yourself. However, Doris will of course be sorry that you do not come; and Pup and John really disappointed not to have you here for the christening. My chief disappointment will be that you are not here for a chance to see the September countryside (which is always lovely), the exhibition in Hilda's honor (which will have been taken down long before November) etc. Susan and I have tickets to go down the Mississippi on a riverboat, starting 20 October, but will be back in a fortnight; that is the only time we are unavailable. However I know that September is a pleasant time at Kenwin, and people want to come there as much as we want you to come here. The Wolffs had hoped for an interview or two to help them for Beowulf and the other books, and this of course comes best when the book is fresh. But they will understand of course.

The book you mention would be hard to buy, but easily available in the library when you come, either September or November.

Must try to get back to that plaguey review.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 August 1956

Dearest Bryher:

The first reviews in: from yesterday's and today's
*Times* and *Tribune*. Not bad on the whole, and certainly respectful.
Win Scott was wrong, I think, in believing that the only way to
treat great tragic events is as great tragedy. It is the view of
one who has never been in a war. Prescott was excellent, I thought,
and the *Tribune* daily man was good too. You have arrived, my dear,
and it does my heart good.

The Hotsons arrive at Hoboken on Saturday, and I drive
down in our Pontiac to pick them up. Your forwarding of the clippings
was their first knowledge of what happened. Wouldn't it be! But they
still do not know that the young couple have left the house and cannot
bear to spend a night in it. No wonder. I have much to tell you in
detail when you come. But to summarize: I heard Saturday night that
there was still blood on the Hotson's floor, and the house was a mess
after the police and F.B.I. had finished ransacking it while they
at once examined the spy angle. Leslie's *Russian* and *Greek* books, and
french and Italian books, and the young sergeant's Japanese books made
the whole thing suspicious. They tore the cellar and the attic apart
also, looking for the gun while they searched for the body of the wife
whom they thought had been done away with by the husband. *For*, they
are in bad straits financially, and when they asked his buddies in the
army, they spoke of the money difficulties. I could not bear the
thought of opening the door for the Hotsons to such a mess, and telephone
calls getting me nowhere, I finally drove out yesterday afternoon. A
car was in the driveway; I knocked at the door, and the very frightened
face of a young man answered me through glass and bolts. "We get fright-
ened when some one knocks!" he said, later, when I was inside. It was
the couple and the young child, and they were putting the place in shape
again. They had done a fine job, despite the fact that his right hand
is crippled, and he is still weak from the loss of more than three pints
of blood. But just being in the house unnerved them, and when I saw
the bedroom floor still with a great track of hardened blood, four or
five feet long, and wide, which they had begun to sand down, I couldn't
help but feel pity. The kitchen they had pretty well washed the blood
from. But I said for them to forget the blood, to forget the window-
washing, and that I would get professional cleaners (who do our own
houses) to come in. I felt too that they might not do a really good
job with the floor, and for Mary to see where the blood had been might
make a great difference. I wish you could have seen how pleased they
were, and that I would explain to Mary that they were no longer there,
and give the Hotsons their phone number, etc etc. Susan phoned the
cleaners last night, and they will go out later this week. Much has
been made in the papers of the young couple's poverty -- the army will
not take care of hospital expenses, I believe, since it happened off

28 August 1956

Dearest Fido:

Your letter of the 25th in this morning. You should
have had one from me at about the same time; and I wrote again yester-
day. The Bowes-Lyon novel, and the Vail one also in the post. For
which my thanks.

I only repeat. No reason at all for you to come until
November, whether Hilda comes or not. She won't mind, and Perdita and
I assume all responsibility. The chief reason for your coming would
be only for our talks together--not just five minutes, but more. If
you do decide to come, however, the five minutes will be easy to get
at the airport before I leave for New Haven with whatever cargo I
collect. No need for Doris to come with us -- let her come later;
and Pup and John would feel hurt to have no one with them. That's
why I still think better for you, perhaps, to go with Doris and them,
and join us in New Haven. It gets Hilda off on a good footing. In
any event, if you prefer coming on to us -- and you know how we should
like that -- it is much better that you come to the shore with us,
and leave Hilda in town at the Club. As to coffee, we provide her
with a large thermos jug filled with it, and she speaks of bringing
a flame; or we give her a little drip pub with an electric grill. We
can re-adjust, later, if this does not work out. Don't growl. Let
me try my way, and don't worry Kat about it. Simply say: Norman
has plans all made; he is very vague; we'll wait until we see him.
You are not to cope alone, and hopefully will hardly have to at all.
You'll see. Just leave things in my paws.

Have tucked your check away in my drawer. I have an extra
sturdy portable always waiting for you. You simply leave in New York
at the end of stay, and I pick up there to bring back to New Haven.

Enclose a review from *News Week* for your collection. Another
good omen that you have "arrived" as a novelist.

All love and a scratch behind the ears,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

30 August 1956

Dearest Fido:

The merest note, but I am anxious to send along the two latest reviews. I had not dreamed that the *Saturday Review* would ask Marianne. It was a great stroke of luck. She always manages to quote with sensibility and precision: one gets a nice picture of the whole. And the *New Yorker* is like a Legion of Honor. As you know, they only have the one huge review and then the very highly selected morceaux choisi.

Another batch of letters in, as from you, with some --mid-month-- as from Hilda in which she says no *Freuds* had as yet arrived. I keep pettling Helen as to whether they were sent. I had specified *air-mail* at once to Hilda; but she murmured once something about your having forbidden airmail for a book. I don't know. Had hoped to see her in New York yesterday, but she was on holiday. Instead I spent hours at the Oxford Press trying to straighten out ownership of U.S. rights for Hilda's trilogy. It finally seems to be that WALLS and ROD have reverted to her, but that TRIBUTE being still in print here, the rights are still with them. All this is discombulating to me in reference to standard rates for permission fees in the States, inclusion in SELECTED POEMS etc. The officers I talked with were very nice (my being an Oxford author helped considerably), and they promised to take it up at staff business meeting tomorrow). I have offered to buy the rights back, or preferably buy all 127 copies of TRIBUTE still in stock, thus to put it out of print, and since they won't reprint it will then revert to Hilda. What a lot of time it takes!

Then to the Gregories where we made the final selections of poems for Hilda's books, arranged them as we would like, and felt very staisfied with the result. They have both been splendidly helpful, and the book would not have been without them. Now we shall have to see what Hilda thinks of the 125 pages we have chosen.

Much confusion re getting the Hotson house cleaned and polished before their return, the cleaners not calling for they key, my having to make a special trip with it last night after coming back from New York; and now I pray they were at it to-day. Saturday morning I drive to Hoboken to pick them up: less work than to find someone, and under the circumstances I want to smooth over any perturbations about the young couple and the state of the house.

Do cable me as and how Hilda and you decide. Most important I should know as quickly as possible.

15 September 1956

Dearest Bryher:

A letter from the Filippini, or at least
from Islay, was waiting at the shore when I returned.
Sorry it was delayed by having to be forwarded to the
shore. We shall move back to town tomorrow. Susan brought
all her orchids in yesterday, and the rest is easy. Now
I am trying to clean up my desk of the remnants of the
show: things not used etc, which must be re-filed. You
spoke of not having put in telephone numbers and the like.
Ours at Goodrich Street is Main 4-3487; and my office phone
(but I shall be chiefly in the library and unavailable
during the day) is State 7-3131, extension 2470. Marianne's
is Ulster 8-5444. Mary Herr is 125 Lancaster 9924.

Do you want to add a copy of BEOWULF for
Herman Rossler, 2645 Pie IX Boulevard, Apt 12, Montreal,
Canada? Why not. It would please them immensely. Such a
nice letter as was in the batch which arrived at my office
yesterday. I leave you to tell Helen if you want to send
one.

I strongly urge a heavy dose of cinema for
Kat, as well as shows. For the latter I suggest: "The Iceman
Cometh" at the Circle in the Square; "Saint Joan" with Slobhan
McKenna at the Phoenix (better get tickets thru John at once
for this, as it is likely to be crowded, having just opened);
"The Diary of Anne Frank" at the Cort, with Susan Strasberg,
a young very fine actress, and a fine play; possibly Thornton
Wilder's "The Matchmaker" at the Royale --light-weight Wilder
but very amusing and alt Wien!; and for a musical, why not
"Damn Yankees" a baseball story with a plot, and we thought
very American and fine anyway. For films, as a starter: "Moby
Dick" dreadful in spots, and superb in spots; Marilyn Monroe
in "Bus Stop" so that you can be an authority for Dame Edith;
"Secrets of the Reef" at the Baronet--superb underwater shots;
"Oklahoma" at the Rivoli; the Jap picture which is advertised
in the papers, at Trans Lux. At least these for a start.

Trust all goes well. You have my love always,

18 September 1956

Dearest Fido:

Your letter of the 17th in this
afternoon's mail. A pat on the tail for
getting Hilda to Prutting? A pat, and a hug,
and a scratching behind the ears, and a nuzzle
to nuzzle, and a bath with the tongue, and a
nip on the flank! The whole thing is a miracle!
And my chest goes flip-flop with relief. Bless
you, and another nuzzle!

Have just been dropping a note to
the Hotsons, and see that they give their tele-
phone number ( Sullivan, near Ellsworth, GA2-6481)
in case you'd like to phone them some evening
after 8, when the rates are cheaper). They'd
love it, I know.

Delighted that you've gotten in
touch with Sylvia. Give her my affectionate
best, and tell her that I have tried on several
occasions to get in touch with her.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

20 September 1966

Dearest Fido:

Many thanks for your letter of yesterday. If
the Pennsylvanian trip doesn't seem indicated (we could
actually do it in two days if you liked: leaving New York
in mid-morning, be in Lancaster by late afternoon, you two
have dinner with Mary, we do market in morning, and return
to New York after lunch so that you are at Beekman for late
dinner. This might give additional substance for experiences
to take back), then why not break up next week for two or
three days by coming up to New Haven. I can get rooms at
Lawn Club again, or at Hotel Taft, if you think that preferable
in order to allow quiet mornings. Perhaps Pup and John could
drive you up, and so see the exhibition while Hilda is still
here, and I could then drive you back to New York and a last
visit with them before the 30th. Or I drive down to get you,
as being less strain. Perhaps Pup would like to stay the few
days in New Haven as a chance for more undivided visit with
Kat, and the explanation is obviously that the city itself
proves a little overpowering. We will know how to plan better
at next visit. Perhaps as John suggested: rooms at some nearby
hotel in the country or at shore. There will not be the celebra-
tions as made the New Haven stay proper first now.

Don't forget to keep up the movies. They make a
good break for afternoon or evening, and the pictured world
provides a kind of escape.

I keep working at my desk. There is still a distance
to go, but at least it does not get worse.

Infinite love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

20 September 1956 (4:30 PM)

Dearest Bryher:

You will have been flooded by letters from me; and at
this stage of the day I cannot really remember what I have said and
what I have not said.

At any rate, first of all vis-a-vis Sylvia. Do impress
on her one thing: a that Yale has always wanted a chance to have her
papers at Yale as a continuing memorial to her and all that she accomp-
lished for 20th-century writing.

b that whatever restrictions may seem necessary for
the time can be put on any material, but that eventually the existence
of the Sylvia Beach Collection alongside the other 20th-century collect-
ions in the Yale Library, especially the Joyce Collection (which is the
finest there can be in terms of printed material) will each help to serve
the others for their mutual advantage and that of scholars and critics.

c that Yale's possession of the Slocum Joyce Collection
is not to be equalled by Harvard's resources in the 20th century (in whihh
they have taken comparatively little interest -- which is the reason Slocum
partly sold and partly gave his collection to Yale). Yale has incomparably
the finest 20th century collection of any university in the world.

d that Yale would be honored at the chance of seeing if
they could raise the money to buy the Joyce material, or the collection as
a whole; but that I could not, as a friend of Sylvia's, try to press upon
her Yale's interest in the matter, beyond telling her, as I did in the past,
that I hoped she would tell us, if she contemplated selling all or a part
of it. The only thing is that if Sylvia has a price in mind for the Joyce
manuscripts, or for the collection as a whole, we ought to know it. For
nothing could be more disagreeable to her or to us than a situation in
which one university was bidding against another as at an auction. There
must be a suitable price, and that is the price we should know of. Ask her.

e as to her other papers, photographs, and special books,
etc., I feel very sure that if her Joyce papers came to Yale, Yale would be
willing to store the rest for her at the library without cost to her, so that
they would be both available and entirely safe.

f I should be glad to discuss all this with her, but we can
do this better if she will tell me beforehand through you what her asking
price is.

Show her this if you like, and certainly give her my warmest
greetings.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

28 September 1956

Dearest Fido:

I hope the week "marches." I say my prayers.

This morning I went to my tire-dealer and had a new set of nylons put on the car. The others had gone 20,000, a very good distance indeed, and were a bit worn down. I did not want the possibility of skidding on slippery roads, or of having a flat tire during our Pennsylvania jaunt. Tomorrow I will take it to the garage, and have it tuned up so that we can be sure all is in order that way. Whenever you decide to go, I think perhaps we should start from the Belkman at about 10:30 in the morning, which would give us a chance to make a little longer lunch hour than you and I alone together would make, and we should reach Lancaster in the late afternoon. It would be nice if Mary could reserve rooms at the hotel for us. You and Hilda dine alone with her that night. The next day it would be fine if Hilda wants to go to Bryn Mawr, but I think Kat will want you to go with her, and perhaps Mary ought not to be left to cope alone. Otherwise, if in Lancaster we do a brief market tour with Kat, so she can see the Amish etc., and then you and she spend the day with Mary (I will bring work to do, and will take a look at the local folk museum), and I can have dinner that night with the three of you if you want. The next day we go toward Bethlehem, stopping at a motel perhaps. Not important that we should decide on that at the moment.

I never did really thank you for bringing over the originals of the photographs of your mother and self, or tell you how good I thought your color shots of Hilda at Kusnacht were. Very professional. Islay will have to watch for his laurels. By the way, explain to Islay sometime that it is I who send him the photographic magazine Image.

Have not sent a copy of *Fraud* to Jean Starr, not knowing her present address. Is she still at the Huntington Hartford place on the west coast? And don't you think (I am really ashamed not to have thought of it before) that you should send an inscribed *Beowulf* to Rinette, because of Adrienne and the dedication. If you have not located Sylvia B let us know, and I will work at it.

Don't forget. If any crisis arises in town, simply signal and I shall run down.

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

As to the trip: I think I spoke of it in my earlier letters today. I had said Tues-out, "Wednesday-there, Friday-back. I did have engagements on Monday but could cancel these and make it Mon-Tues-Wed if you want. Which would mean Friday for a trip to New Haven by car with John and Pup for a look together at the library "homage." I think John and Pup should both be urged to do it while Hilda is still here.

So much depends on whether one has that extra week after the 30th. An
alternative, if she goes back on the 30th, would be to come to New Haven
for two or three days this week, while we saw "allingford and other points.
"Wednesday and Thursday, Susan is tied up with judging and exhibiting at
flower shows, but we could be self-sufficient, especially if you stay as
before at the Lawn Club. I think I also suggested that perhaps, because
Hilda wanted to get out of the city, Pup might like to come to New Haven
for the same visit.

I think if Monday is indicated for Lancaster you had better telephone me
no later than Saturday, so that I can make arrangements locally.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 September 1956

Dearest Bryher:

Susan's sister and niece arrived from Rome (but as from Cambridge) -- you met her, I think -- Mrs Trevalyan) yesterday and I am taking her to the football game this afternoon. Don't forget the rodeo for yourself and Doris. It is indicated. A part of your American education -- a kind of cousinship like having fought bears with a gun. You must go!

My own moments since leaving you have been in reading the poems of Edward Taylor, the discovery among late 17th century American poets -- his manuscripts hidden for centuries. Stupid publishers have bogged at the thought of his collected works. To get them in print is a little non-financial venture of mine: the use of influence in the right direction. They will have been read by me before the end of tomorrow.

As I told Hilda on the phone, I am taking the 8:00 o'clock train from New Haven on Monday, and will be at the Beekman for coffee a little after 9:30, and must leave after an hour. Will bring down sample pages from Ingholt for you to see and report on. I said either Coffee Shop or a pot in the room, as you think best. If Sylvia wants to come, fine; for I shall be seeing the appraiser later in the day. Call me Sunday morning if it is inconvenient for you to see me Monday. No reason for Doris not to coffee too if she'd like.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

11 October 1956

Dearest Fido:

Anothere beautiful day, but
chiller than yesterday, and Hilda would
hardly have put out a paw to fit the dino's
step. I worked like a beaver last night at
the office and finished up the manuscript of
the poems to send off, as well as re-read(
against some foot-noting I'll hire done while
we're away) the 68 pages of Susan s great-
great-great grandmother's which I'm editing.

This morning's mail brought me a
Bumpus package with ROCKALL and HOME BAKED:
a little book of bread recipes. Just at the
moment I rather forget the <u>raison</u> (or should
it be <u>raisin</u>) d'etre for the latter. Are the
Surfield's Scillonians, or cousins? I blush
a doughy hue not to rise to the occasion without
yeast.

I enclose a letter which came yest-
erday, after you left, from Mrs Hodgson. "return
in an envelope. I enclose one which should be
used up.

I miss you both already.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

12 October 1956

Dearest Fido:

I was in luck this morning. Being a little late, I had not left the house when you called. This was good news indeed that the pups will rent rather than try to buy. We must have snared them in the web of our wishes; at any rate I feel very sure of being right in preferring it to be this way. We shall like having them on this side, and you might point out to Kat that this means we will all be on the same side of the Sound, convenient to Watch Hill or wherever she might like to go. Much better this way both for her and for us and for you, for you must come too after the islands have been re-done.

Susan was a little tired this morning as well she might be, not getting in here until 1.30. I met her; we sat for a moment, but it was nearly 3 before we were in bed. I suspect we shall nod tonight.

I am working like mad to clear my desk before we leave. By the way, if you want to take a chance (since they can forward on from there) our address from the 27th of Oct until Nov 5th will be Hotel Maison de Ville, 727 Toulouse Street, New Orleans, Louisiana.

I needn't say what love I send.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

16 October 1956

Dearest Fido:

To write you a frenzied and scatterbrained letter
to welcome you back to Wenwin seems sheer madness on my part.
But these past few days have been mad, or at least maddening,
as I try to get the affairs of International House in order be-
fore I leave, truly charge like a football team at the opposition
of papers on my desk, and make things tidy with the bank so that
I can cash a check during our absence.

I'll be writing, en route, of course; this is chiefly
to take care of one or two oddments on my desk, so that they too
can be filed away. Firstly, I do see why you shied away from having
Viola Jordan up to see Hilda, and how glad I am that I did not tell
her about the exhibition with its caseful of Freud material. From
Pound I can take it, as consistent though wrong-headed. But poor
Viola has neither knowledge nor sense about such matters. How can
she make such decisions.

As to Brentano's, the Wolves, and Meowulf, I'll write
later; but today Kurt called to say that all but 700 of the first
edition had been sold out: far more copies more quickly than for
any book so far; and since I shall be away for a fortnight I
told him to print up 3000 more so that we would not be unable to
deliver copies when the Christmas sales begin.

I'll use a free copy of Hilda's *Freud* as an excuse to
write Dr Wilbur on my return.

By the way, Suhrkamp has asked for a copy of the ms of
Hilda's *Selected Poems*, as of my letter to him sending the Freud (on
the chance) and telling him about the new ms.

The broad book stands explained. Susan was too tired at
two in the morning to have remembered, when I asked her. She is
delighted. On the list of books out in England there are a few that
would interest me, if you write Bumpus: Elizabeth Sprigge's biography
of Gertrude Stein, Auden's Faber Book of Modern American Verse;
Schallenberg's "Memoirs" (he was Nazi secret service head), and if good
Mr Wilson knows what it is I'd very much like to see the book on
English society in Florence in the 1840's about which Rita wrote. It
would make excellent background for my Italian notebooks introduction
which I shall be writing soon.

Until later, then; and all love.

10 November 1956

Dearest Fido:

My weekend as an Alumni Trustee of Andover didn't materialize. For when I started out for Andover via Gardner, yesterday morning, after a card to you, I didn't realize that at that very moment -- to the very minute -- my father had died. So, unawares, I was driving towards that news, which I heard when my car pulled into the driveway. But how fortunate it was! For I could be there with the rest, at least to comfort by my being there, for whatever it was worth. Instead of going on, of course, I spent the night at home, and drove back late this morning to New Haven, to gather a different wardrobe and return tomorrow until Wednesday morning. The funeral will not be until Tuesday afternoon, for Monday is a Massachusetts holiday, and the cemetery people will not work on that day. My mother has taken it very well, with only an occasional catch in her voice, and moments of being on the verge of tears. But she always catches herself, and makes the situation easier for everyone else. There is no point in going into it all -- but I could be company at the undertakers, and order the flowers from the family, and keep the conversation going so that she will not be alone. I rather dread the next few days, for his body will be on view to the public both on Sunday and on Monday nights, and I shall have to be there to exchange benevolent remarks with the large numbers who will come out of respect for him. The service itself is always shorter and has a kind of finality to it. But of course one cannot really be sorry in the sense of a sudden death: that kind of grief came last January, and since then there has been only waiting. I am only grateful for my mother's sake that she does not have to carry the burden through another winter, but can begin to mix with people again and have fresh things to think of. And how happy I am that you could have met both my parents, as you did, because it lets you share that with me.

Your first letter about Hilda came in the early mail yesterday, before I left; and your second was here this afternoon when I came down to write you about my father's death. I could have wept at the news of Kat's unglück. I know exactly how it happened; at a party in Cincinnati on our way out, there was an almost identical incident, without the unhappy result. And when it happened twice we took the rug up. There is no use wailing about the carelessness, but carelessness it was. And that it should have happened to her at this precise time is obscene. I worry about the shock more than I do about the long-term effects, though she will such difficulties with balancing, crutches, and the like, that I shall be as nervous as you are for many, many weeks.

2

The news of the world is almost sadder, however, than the news of what more immediately affects us; for Hilda will recover, and my father's death is a release. But what can one say about the world's illness, from which only dark shadows are thrown over everything. With Poland and Hungary in their first attempts I was given a kind of confirmation of what I told you about the possibility that the Russian empire might be breaking at the seams. And of course it still is, even with such drastic and terrifying stitches as the Russians are taking. For with the weaknesses shown, the seams will stretch and burst again. Yet meanwhile one can only mourn for the Hungarians especially, and the fact that nothing is done to help them. We have given ourselves such weapons that we fear the use of them as we did the use of germ warfare in World War II. It is the mid-east that shows the breaking seams on our side. One can understand each step on every side, gloss it, be wise in afreshought. But why, oh why, did the British ever leave the Canal? And why, oh why, did Dulles have his chance to act like a bumbling idiot, without check or consultation? For Nasser had to be put down, and I think we will all be grateful to Eden for doing what he did; though I think it will eventually cost him his prime-ministership. The American election leaves things as inconclusive as before, though a Democratic victory won on such issues as Stephenson raised gave little promise of a betterment.

I am too tired to think of it all, but we shall write often about this and about or trip down the Mississippi.

And Robert's collapse? It seems too symbolic.

You know what love I send!

Zcoran

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

28 November 1956

Dearest Bryher:

This is too absurd -- my not writing you -- and yet
there have been so many interruptions, and I have felt myself some-
what let down after the funeral, that I have hardly done more than
jot a few notes to Hilda, for whom the mail should bring something.
But I shall try to send off a note each day, leaving out for the
moment any comment on how the Boxers are doing. I'll save those for
your return to the Alps.

When did I leave off?

At any rate, to give a brief synopsis. It was most
fortunate, as I wrote you, that I was stepping into my car for a
luncheon at Gardner almost at the very moment when my father died.
And you can imagine how relieved I was that we were both back from
Louisiana -- a little note from my mother waiting my return, said
"How glad I shall be when you are back!" I think she knew. The
Monday following my father's death was a holiday, and the grave-
diggers would not work, even for double pay, so the funeral could
not be until Tuesday, leaving two nights beforehand when his body
was on display to the public -- a barbaric custom, but in the case
of those more or less prominent within a community, it gives a
chance for the working people (who cannot leave their employment
for the services) to come and pay their respect. Fortunately my
mother did not try to be present, and my brother and sister and I
greeted the lines of people and accepted their condolences. And
people did seem to care, and made a great point of stating that
he was the leading citizen, that there was no one to replace him,
etc. He would have been gratified, I know. There and at the
funeral itself there were literally hundreds of floral tributes,
and I must say the effect was considerably impressive. What I
liked least was the idea of having the coffin open, but it didn't
matter, and I was even pleased to see that he was wearing the Grieder
tie that I bought him on our last visit together there. My mother
is tired, but has held up splendidly. We were up again this past
Monday, when I had to sign some business papers connected with the
estate -- not very large, alas, after all the business difficulties
and expenses of his illness -- but the complexities always exist --
and she showed me your letter with great pleasure that you had written
her. Hilda also sent condolences through me, and she was pleased at
that.

The day after I returned from the funeral, the doctors
pushed up a little operation for the removal of a subacious cyst on
my right temple, which had suddenly become infected and ballooned up
to the size of a shilling. They put in a drain, and I spent the next
few mornings having it treated so that the infection would not spread

into my eye or my ear or the veins, and I was a little fatigued by
it all. But it seems to have cleared up nicely now, save that I
must go back in three months to see if any of the tumor still re-
mains.

As to the affairs that bedevil the world just now, I only wish
I had an answer, and even more so that the United States had a policy
besides trying to be friendly to everyone, and succeeding with none.
Alas, Mr Dulles seems to be recovering from his cancer, for I had
hoped it would prove an excuse for his resignation. Perhaps it will,
though that may be too late. To have Herbert Hoover, Jr., in as acting
Secretary of State, almost sounds as if it was a nickname. However,
I agree with you -- things being equal, I give us another 18 months
or so before any war, and it is not altogether clear what will happen
then. The chief hope, I presume, is the internal situation within
Russia, one which the putting down of the Hungarian revolt has not
alleviated.

I have had three cards now from Hilda, which seem on the whole
cheerful. I have explained the period of being in the clinic not as
punishment, but as a caesura -- a period between periods, in which
she can syntehsize for a new adventure. She seems to like this idea,
and you will understand its significances. The whole thing still
apalls me, and the costs must be terrific. Thank God you were there
to cope. I only wish I could be at your side to help.

Since you are in England, one can begin for the last moment of
this letter with Rose Odle's suggestions that it might be wise for
Dorothy's things to come to the States. I only wish they might, and
especially that they might be in Yale with the rest of the muniment
room. I mean of course whatever manuscripts there are, as well as the
correspondences etc. I could either put them in an adjacent filing
cabinet and control that way, for her, or they could go to the Library.
Leon Edel, of whom she spoke, is a friend of mine, and an excellent
scholar. His present work on Henry James is really first-rate, most
sensitive and understanding; and he has done good work on Proust as
well. Here the ms here, they could be worked on, would be worked on;
and one wonders, after the brushings aside of her work by the younger
English, whether or not she will be given the proper kind of attention
there. Americans may have all kinds of faults, but they are capable
of respect, even of awe, of literary figures, and one could guarantee
that Dorothy would not be neglected. You will know best about all these
things; all I want to express is our interest and desire to help.

Susan has been in New Jersey for the last couple of days, on flower
show business, and I must run home and put the orchids to bed.

All love, and give my regards to Rita and to Philip.

Nornyn

30 November 1956

Dearest Bryher:

It seems as hopeless as ever, but perhaps I can sneak
in a few minutes at the afternoon's end before I have to hurry home to
change into dinner clothes and hurry on again to Hartford for dinner and
a waltzing party of the Mark Twain Association. Waltzing is not really
my forte any longer, but as a trustee I must make my appearance and I
shall hope for a moment or two in some corner where I can do a little
business. Tomorrow night we dine with the Librarian of the Bodleian. It
appears that they are out for American gifts, are setting up a tax-exempt
American corporation with which to tempt donors on this side, and other-
wise trying to do abroad what British tax regulations will not permit at
home. For I gather no British can claim tax exemption for gifts to a
library or institution.

A few little details, at least I can get in. I have heard
from Faber & Faber, and to my disappointment although not altogether to my
surprise they have declined the manuscript of Hilda's Selected Poems. But
I have always suspected that TSE did not find a warm spot in his heart
for her poetry, and when I mentioned this in a letter to Pound, he replied
in his dancy fashion:

yu air K0rekt H.D. represented and -ents if not a
greater amount, at any rate an in the composition of concerted
elephants,

a higher % of them things the pore Possum jes' kaynt STAND,
than even I do.

They ask where to send the ms, and so I am writing them to send it to Rita at
Lowndes, so that it can be sent out again from there when and as I find some
other publisher who might be a possibility. Have you suggestions, or Edith --
if you could handle it gently so that I did not seem to be too much a part of
it. I notice that Rupert Hart Davis is publishing a little poetry, and might
try them, as thru the Hotsons, if you think proper. Hope Rita will not mind.
If she does just ship it back to me, and I'll resend at the proper moment.

I am sorry to see from Doris' letters that nothing has changed
for the better in relation to the sale of the farms, and hope that you can get
somewhere with this matter in your talks with Philip. I can't help but feel,
as from a distance, that it is madness to keep on with the wages under present
conditions. I doubt that it will save as much in future sales price as it eats
up in the maintenance of what must primarily by now be pride. I could weep of
course that it should turn out this way, but imagine that with the large estab-
lishment it is out of hand for Doris to cope with. She would be best with a
really smaller farm and a line of truly choice bulbs. If you write her, tell
her that her parcel of bulbs for Susan arrived last week, no doubt having been
delayed months in quarantine, since I had thought she had shipped them even be-

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

fore she came over. We had a brief warm spell, so that Susan was able to
get them in the ground safely, and she will write Doris shortly.

But what of the Joan saga? Do I gather that Ethel went back, after
all, without Joan, and that you still have to take care of her at Küssnacht?
You have not mentioned, and Hilda only indirectly, but a hint here and there
makes me wonder if anything was settled.

John spoke to me over the phone about the further developments in
the affair at the 'seekman. It is fantastic, and I worry lest this become
obsessive with Doris -- as well it might. However it turns out, she should
feel no guilt; but I doubt much that you will want to return there yourself
on future trips.

A letter from Aurelia Hodgson of the 26th began cheerfully in answer
to a postcard from the river, by saying "when your card came, my husband said,
'Tell him to come up the Mississippi and Ohio, and moor in our spring run, and
visit with us.'" But it went on: "One piece of news: R. had what the doctor
called a cerebral spasm on Nov 18. It passed off in a few hours, but I'm
taking a 3 month leave this winter instead of staying in town and working. I'd
like the experience again of a few months unharried and unhurried living."
Naturally I'm immensely relieved that she will be there to make the house
warm enough for anyone without six sweaters and shirts in combination, but I
wonder if under the circumstances of no wages for her for 3 months, I ought
not to raise the Christmas check to $1500. There is enough in the savings
account. Alas, I have a suspicion that this is the beginning of a sign of the
end.

I heard, indirectly, that Viola Jordan had decided, after Ezra's
advice, to sell her letters from him and send the money to Mary Rachewiltz,
Ezra's daughter. So I wrote her and asked if we might consider them here,
and she sent them along at once. Actually they are very fine, especially
the early ones where there is less posturing. They go back to 1905 and those
days, and there are mentions of Hilda of course. They would have been too
expensive for me to buy, so the Library is scraping together the money to do
it. I am glad because it lays the way open for keeping Hilda's letters to
her together too. Viola wants no money for herself, and is doing this with
Ezra's only as a way of helping Mary. I doubt that the little Papal prince
whom Mary married manages to add much income through his researches on Italian
hieroglyphics and underground agriculture by pre-historic Italians.

Enough for now. I think of me stubbing my toe to watz time.

3 December 1956

Dearest Bryher:

Your letter of the 28th was in this morning's mail -- the first from England. It must be a most difficult time to be there, though you have a knack for being at the right spot in crucial moments to get the feel, or should one say the horror and the helplessness. Never before have I felt myself to be so uninformed. I sense the importance of knowing the secret conversations, the negotiations, the planning and lacks of planning on both sides. All of this is so much a culmination of a decade, that it seems almost too patly to fill an historical interval. But more than that, it is so impossible to isolate single events or decisions and to analyze them outside of their total context. I have never been a Dulles enthusiast as you know, nor approved of a foreign policy which seemed to be so single-handed over so wide an area of trouble that there are not brain cells, hands, or eyes in any individual with which to handle it. If I had the sharpest single criticism of Dulles it would be the impossibility of any other governments carrying on discussions in the intervals between his actual presence, as he jumps from one crisis to another, knowing that as far as the western world is concerned no sustained action can be carried on or financed with money or materiel except by Dulles' government. But on the other hand I cannot become enthusiastic about actions which are too little or too late, which do not seem to have been executed with the proper long term program of carrying them out; and as a result one has a Suez situation. I suppose I mean that I cannot praise Dulles, certainly; but I do not think I can praise Eden or the French either. I can only shiver and weep, and offer a universal condemnation. Yet, and I say it with reluctance, I do not believe the States have a foreign policy at all, and I wish they would stop trying to please everyone.

Meanwhile I try to get back into Hawthorne and the 19th century, simply to do something. At the moment anyhow there would be no point in my going to Washington; I would not know the objectives, and without their formulation I might better content myself with footnotes. As to world, I can explain why everything has happened. But to what avail?

To pick up your recent letters, let me add footnotes to them, though so much has happened, personal and otherwise, that I may simply be repeating myself. As to Hilda's Moravian books and papers, that is simple. They can go into my room at the Library, and I shall get an added filing cabinet for there to put them and other papers in it. Even without her coming, she should really send all her things over en masse, to go over later here. Incidentally, I have a little plan -- quite entre nous-- since it may not work out, of trying to persuade Lehigh University to give her an honorary degree next June, on the basis of Bethlehem and her father's connection with Lehigh. I

know their Dean, and a number of the faculty; and if anyone can do it, they can. This would be a further excuse to tempt her over. And do, if you can without harassing her, persuade her to take out her papers so she can be a citizen when the *Selected Poems* come out. I am still trying to negotiate with Oxford, here, by the way, to get back the control of TRIBUTE, on this side. They are like molasses running uphill. A letter from Suhrkamp this morning says the ms has arrived at that end. I told them we could make a smaller selection if it worked better that way. The plan for publishing Hilda's little Moravian story has reached a temporary standstill: Mrs Lindtner wrote back that the head of the Moravian Archial School thought it would be wonderful--though one might have thought he could write me himself -- and wants to leave it to me to arrange for the printing and then the distribution of the booklet. They want a lot. I daresay the only thing I can do is to drive to Bethlehem, and try to work out something with the Moravian Bookshop. But it might be simpler for Hilda merely to write them a check.

I spoke with Horace on the phone yesterday, and he wants me to read the manuscript of his Amy Lowell book. It seems that McGraw-Hill want to back out of it, think it too dangerous; though the difficulty may simply be that the young editor is the grandson of Amy's girl friend, and they now live out of Amy's trust fund established for her and descendants(?). I can't tell much without having seen the manuscript, but was pleased that Horace wanted my advice.

The volumes of *The Egoist* arrived safely and I am grateful for them. Have reasons for wanting to look at them almost immediately. That book on the Anglo-Italian colony, I think you will find interesting; I have the Italian edition which came out a couple of years ago, but will now have to make my references to the English edition as being more available and readily understandable. Did you want to send *Dial*?

Will the boys make their South American trip with a stop-over in the States for a Prutting? I wish they would; it would be so good to see them again.

I presume you will be spending Christmas with Hilda in Zurich. Do confirm this.

Later letters, in batches sent, told me that Joan was still there at Ausnacht, and I noticed that Ethel wondered if Joan would really ever return to England. Is there an underlying hope that she will not?

Would George like one of the little metal tyrannosaurs, if one is obtainable? I can say that you quoted his remark about having one as a household pet. George must find the present times more than a little difficult.

Did Rita have something to offer. I seem to be able only to think of things for you to write, and I gather that is not the right answer for the moment.

Need I say how much love I send, and how helpless I feel?

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

14 December 1956

Dearest Bryher,

A solid week of rain, and today I was in New York in the midst of it. Now, I am at the office, to write you a letter -- long owed. I saw the Wolves at noon. Helen was otherwise occupied for lunch, which I had with Kurt, but we all had a half hour together first. Helen is very sure she does not want a dish-washer, says she has no room for it; so I did not try to press, after five minutes got me nowhere. As I think I told you, Pantheon stock paid a dividend last year for the first time (thanks to Mrs Lindberg), and I daresay this makes things easier for them. Christian is nearly self-supporting, thanks to his job and scholarship, so that is no problem, and they prefer for his own good to have it so. But they were grateful as always for your affectionate watching, and it is a reliance, simply to know. They had some figures on the sale of the books up to the present time, although the *Roman Wall* stock on hand was upped by the third printing which appeared today.

| October | Player's | Boy | Roman Wall | Bewoulf |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sold: | 4416 | 2814 | 6423 | 3706 |
| Free | 488 | 322 | 462 | 408 |
| Stock | 348 | 948 | 182 | 3023 |

The November sales for Bewoulf was 392; and as you know it has sold more within comparable periods of time than any other novel so far.

I brought in fifty more pages of the catalogue for the Gandharan book, to show them how it was going; Ingholt assures me that he will have finished this, plus the captions for the illustrations by the end of this month, and the introduction by February 1st. Certainly I hope so; I keep after him as though it were a dissertation he was finishing, and he makes regular reports. Certainly I've worked harder over this than over any of the other books.

The rest of the day I spent at the Morgan Library doing last checkings against the manuscripts of my transcripts of the French and Italian journals. Did not quite finish; but on the 22nd, the little student of mine (Donald Cheney) whom we met in Rome, is being married in New York to an art student he met there, and apparently I must go. Since it is too small a wedding for invitations formally printed I feel I had better accord with what he obviously feels as the honor of my private invitation. I can do the last of the job that morning.

Packages begin to come, in addition to the envelopes of letters.
The *Egoist* is here, and two volumes of *The Dial* were in this morning's mail.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 December 1956

Dearest Fido:

And what made you think that I didn't like Morris? Did you ever look at the 26 pages from him in volume V of the POETS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE? Did you ever sit in on my graduate seminar and hear me talk about his importance as a revitalizer of diction, the restoration of the myth and legendry (the modern use of Arthur et al owes far more to him than to Tennyson), and his particular relevance and importance in the study of Eliot and Pound? You shock me! Why I am almost as equally interested in him because of his work with crafts: printing, design (textiles and wallpaper), and furniture (did you know that the Morris chair, by the way, is a direct copy of Chinese adjustable chairs in the Ming period? I was startled a few days ago, when I saw a collection of erotic prints, to discover a Morris chair.) And Yale has an important collection of Morris; you and I even spoke once of trying to complete their nearly complete run of Kelmscott books. If I have not spoken often of your own collection it is because you said these were books you wanted to keep always near you. If you want Maggs to send over The Well manuscript for safekeeping here, I'll keep it with tenderness and care.

Glad to know Hilda's bone is knitting, a very good sign indeed for the future. But it is no wonder she grows restless; that is another sign of health. I'm sorry, though, that she draws back in the matter of the passport; perhaps when she comes to this side it will seem easier. I wish she would, of course. Primarily, because if I should ever have to get her over in an emergency which unnerved her, she might not be admitted if they feared mental complications. Secondly, because if she were a citizen at the time of the publication of her POEMS, there might be an award or two coming her way. One can't say for sure about this of course, but to be considered she would have to have been a citizen at the time of publication. But one can't hold this possibility up as a bribe.

I do not know what to think about the oil matters; but I would certainly agree with you that whatever was found ought to have been brought out in the open at once, and not whispered about almost like propaganda, especially when it becomes so convenient a reason for action, one, that is, which can be hinted at without specification. I don't challenge your statement, mind you; I am simply unclear as to precisely what happened. If it is a matter of "oil" in the Middle-East, then as we all know, oil has been a point of rivalry in terms of exploitation for a generation: on the part of England, the Dutch, the French, the U.S.A., and most recently Russia. Part of the large amounts of wealth which have poured out have enriched the exploiting

2

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

countries (I use the word technically), and part has gone to the Arab nations themselves and given them the power to express their own nationalism, year for more favorable contracts, and given an uneasy paradox of competition and collaboration amongst themselves. This has been played on by the business interests of almost every country I know of, although there are paradoxes here too, as in the very large, and sometimes controlling foreign investments in Dutch Shell, various Standard Oil companies, and the like. Most Arab governments stand or fall depending on the revenues they are able to extract from their leases. Now what I gather is chiefly meant in the present situation is the competition for newly discovered oil resources in French North Africa, a condition which gives to their sheiks the chance for a comparable power to that of the Middle East proper. These sheiks, fired with the nationalism of the Middle Eastern Arab nations have been working for independence from France (whose policy there has for generations been less than altruistic or commendable), and this movement was well under way long before the discovery of oil made North Africa all the more important to France. The general trend of independence would appear to make it inevitable that North Africa would regain its sovereignty eventually, and the sheiks would inevitably have sent out feelers for the contracts which would maintain their economic independence once their political independence had been gained, the two working meanwhile together. Oil interests everywhere would respond, and certainly amongst them would be American companies (and one must remember that all of them have foreign investments in them as well). One might perhaps say that these companies should not discuss the matter with the sheiks, but wait until independence had come; but they might fear the danger of facing an accomplished contract once the independence had been gained, or perhaps they might even be moved by the possibility that such faits accompli had been achieved by the Russians, to whom the sheiks would turn if denied by all others. I say it is entirely likely that American oil companies would be amongst those to correspond and negotiate; but I think the world would have turned upside down, if companies from other nations had not also themselves been in such communication. Among them I should include the French, but not forgetting the undeniable fact that the North Africans hate the French, and would fear that French contracts would deny them their political freedom. I do not think that the United States government, as such, would directly negotiate with the sheiks, and give material aid for their independence movement, and more than I think Great Britain would; although it is not inconceivable that the U.S. would express disapproval and veil threats if the contracts were made with the Russians. One cannot say, of course; one would actually have to see the documents themselves. I gather that the French have not shown these, nor if they were comminicated to the British, have the latter in turn communicated them to the U.S. Government. Why? Because the way of government here, and the power of the press is such, and the sympathy with Israel so great in certain circles, that such information would inevitably be "leaked out." In this way pressure would be brought to bear on the administration, remembering firstly that Dulles himself is not popular even within the "republican party, and that the Democratic party (in power in both houses of Congress) would relish such a chance to embarass the party in the White House. What I have tried to say is that I do not doubt there are papers from American oil interests dealing with the future of North African discoveries; I would not doubt either that there

3

are similar papers in existence from oil companies in other western nations. But I must know the circumstances of them before I will automatically accept the direst implications on the part of a nation so difficultly situated as is France. And in any event one cannot say that the present Mediterranean situation is a consequence of the new discovery of oil in North Africa, but rather of the consequences of the discovery of oil years ago in Saudi-Arabia and its neighborhood, and a world-temper which argues against the maintenance of old forms of colonial empire. And it is this latter which, alas, causes small nations anxious to escape old empires throw themselves into the arms of new empires like that of Russia. The significance of Hungary, perhaps its inestimable contribution, is to show that such a new empire is simply the old kind with its evils a million-fold compounded.

This is no way excuses the United States for its bumbling and fumbling diplomacy, its lack of experience in a world which for many reasons has invalidated the old kind of diplomacy. It is an experience of responsibility which I imagine most Americans (in government or on the streets) wish we could avoid, wish that some one else (with the exception of the Russians) could take over. But the old way having failed, it would seem, they are unwilling to finance almost completely as they would have to, or to give manpower for death as they have had to and would eventually have to, a continuance of the old ways. Eisenhower is not a great leader, and certainly Dulles is not a leader at all; but when they look to France, whom do they see? When they look to Italy, to Germany, to Spain, who is there? And, I suspect, they do not see Eden as one either. And so the United States goes on, trying everything with desperation and with singular lack of success. That the British and Western Europeans should hate the Americans is, I guess, inevitable; they would accept leadership if it were here; as it is they despise the only gods( written in very small letters) there are, knowing that they must depend upon them because there is nothing else, except to import and try out other gods from Russia. And unlike the early Saxons, the present generation can read and knows too much.

How right, how sensitive, how understanding, your novels have been.

I say it with admiration, and with the love you know you have from me.

21 December 1956

Dearest Fido:

I send this to Hirslanden, in Hilda's care, on the
faint hope that there may be more deliveries in Zurich than at
Aüssnacht, and that by some miracle it may reach you before Christ-
mas. Not that you will not have had my cable, and not that you
will not know that you have my love, our love, for Christmas, as
always, but simply that I like wishing a happy Christmas and a
better New Year to you who deserve it so much.

Your letter with its Christmas enclosure came in this
morning's mail, with your love; and for both of them I thank you
since they both enrich me. This last year has been hard on the
pocketbook, with the wedding, the strikes in Gardner, and the like;
but now I shall be able to have the typists and take the trips to
find the footnotes to fill the pages to end the chapters and close
the books of Hawthorne's letters. A kind of house that Fido built!
And I am happy to live in it.

The floor of my office is piled high with envelopes and
packages from Switzerland and London, but I have not tried to open
them until after the holiday when my desk will be nearly cleared,
thanks to the chance which Christmas cards give of seeming appropriately
to answer minor missives, briefly, of long standing. And I have. Al-
together I have sent out for Susan and mostly for myself over 300 of
them. But we limit ourselves to 5¢ cards, and hope they will receive
the same welcome. The Florentine book also arrived this morning, for
which my thanks. They seem to have done a good job of it. Viking Press
sent me the new Rebecca West novel? Have you read it, and would you like
after I have finished.

I did mean to ask you about Edith. Hilda sent queries which
sounded as though there were a story. And you have kept it from me! You
are a wretch.

Have seen the Hotsons briefly. Leslie gave a lecture last
week at High (Bethlehem, you know) and apparently had a wonderful time,
was honored etc. Did I tell you he was given his D. Phil from Cambridge
on the strength of his publications? "He is much pleased, and so am I.
Now I am trying to see, quietly, if we cannot have him made an associate
fellow of one of the Yale colleges. They plan to stop by on Christmas
morning, to leave a candle and sing a carol outside our front door (the
two of them Noeling in duet). It should be sensational.

Think you were wise to give Joan an extended chance. Am
heartbroken about Doris' tangled affairs, but, alas, not surprised. We
see eye to eye on this.

We shall be thinking of you both on Christmas day, and keep
sending you our love.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

26 December 1956

Dearest Fido:

Three letters from you in today's mail: one this morning (that of the 19th), one at noon (the 20th), and one this mid-afternoon (undated, but I judge to be the 21st). It made a festival.

I have stayed at the graduate school office today, being
still a little limp from Christmas, while I read the manuscript of
Horace's biography of Amy Lowell. He called me Monday, impatient be-
cause I had not read it, and wanting it back to be retyped, though it
had actually only been with me four days. I think one trouble may be
with the introduction (how odd the degree of influence such a prelim-
inary piece can have!) in which in a very racy and sprightly style he
demolishes Amy and her pretensions as a poet, as though the book could
not speak for itself, and he feared the reader might believe him an
Amygist. I have read 150 pages so far, and the tone is not that of
the introduction, though it is obvious that he does not admire her, and
is (actually) pretty much following the line of current opinion of
her and her work. It does have an immense amount of apercuſs and commentary
on the historical scene, and a number of good biographical portraits of
people. I fear, so far, it does not compare to his Lawrence book, but
you and Hilda will be better judges of the accuracy of his larger portrait
than I am.

I'm sorry that my strategy in waiting to ask Helen about the
washing machine on the very edge of Christmas, made you think I had for-
gotten my promise to you to see about the matter. But I am sure it will
be all right, one way or another, and in any event she will be grateful
for your remembering her. Perhaps they can be persuaded to keep it for
their trip together to South America next month, or in February.

The news about Hilda's X-ray and the slowness with which her
bone knits is most unhappy; although I suppose it is not surprising that
the calcium takes longer to activate itself. I remember well that my
orthopedist warned me that it would take me longer to recover each time
that my hip went bad -- not from an increase in the infection, but simply
because of the slower calcification as one grows older. But it is simply
wretched that her stay in bed is prolonged. And I weep too because it will
keep you confined.

I still have every confidence in Hilda's long term prognosis,
but the news about Doris brings honest tears to my eyes. For although we
both could have told her that he course was a fatal one, I don't doubt for
a moment her belief that she was an old hand in these things, and unable
to confer on practical terms with John, she has tried to keep up a financial
front she could not sustain. I can't help but feel in agreement with you
that to forgive her debts to you would be to relinquish control of the
situation, to no one's benefit. What I think will have to be done is to

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

make some sort of arrangement or settlement ultimately with the Trustees. Philip will know how to handle this, and then when she settles in on a small scale, for really fineubb raising one can adjust it all by some sort of allowance. As for Joan, the Easter arrangement sounds sensible; and one can judge better then.

The expression "free" books means those which have been given to booksellers (a basis on which to get them to read what is in stock, and keep in their personal libraries), plus review copies.

You must have skipped over my remarks about the D.H. Lawrence letters to Dorothy R. They were in the letters when I was talking about Edal, and the possibility of persuading Rose Odle to send all correspondence over. "But I know of course, now, that that is impossible. But she was both generous and thoughtful to give them to you for safekeeping, and they will be an invaluable part of the muniment room. I cannot of course thank her for them myself, but I do thank you for seeing they are in safe hands. I was most grateful to my Fido.

Will resubscribe to the Times Book "review and Archaeology and Image; so do not bother as from your side. Checks more easily made out here. Islay's Christmas note mentioned Image, and said he liked it. This pleases me of course. Cards from "enneth and from Heydt, which were pleasant to have.

Whatever happens at the moment in the mid-east seems to be under cover. It is dreadful, from every angle, to think of the worsening of American relations with France and England. The feeling here of course seems to be that England was persuaded to pull French chestnuts out of the fire. French Morocco does not receive, evidently, the emphasis on this side which it should have for causing the British to attempt to seize the Suez. I still think it would have been better to publish the seized documents and name the black powers behind the American administration than to so freely circulate the rumors of them, which I should think would as easily cause the French and British publics to turn communist; actually the publication while it might upset the American governments would help to keep British and French governments established, since they would be shown to be actively opposed to the secret forces in control of the States. I can believe that it is widely believed on the continent that the U.S. and Russia have made a secret pact at Geneva (though it shows little understanding of America), but this too would mean that opposition to the States would necessarily involve opposition to her ally Russia. I should have interpreted the foreseeable consequences of the Suze seizure as inevitably throwing the U.S. and Russia (though the public statements have all been Russian) on the same side of the fence. But the whole thing is a mess, and as you say one is better out of it. A good time for Hawthorne footnotes.

I should not try to persuade Hilda to come over to this side, except for a brief summer visit, so long as the situation is as it is; and

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

you necessarily feel as you do. Her greatest loyalty is to you, far
more so than to Pup or this side; and she would not want to seem to
desert you, or to be deserting a ship at such a time of crisis. Loyalty,
like her capacity for love, is one of her greatest virtues; and we both
love her for it. Perhaps in a few years, if things grow better, and
America can regain a little of Europe's confidence, especially English
confidence, the situation will change. We can only hope, and for every
reason.

I was sorry to hear that Martita did not like her part in *Anastasia*.
*Time* magazine gave it a very bad review, but they were the only one I
read which did not seem to like it.

I was delighted just before Christmas when the *Encyclopedia
Americana* sent me the article on Hilda to rewrite. They were properly
disatisfied with the poor job which had just been done for them. It
was atrocious. And they are willing to add 32 lines more if I will write
it. Of course I will. But can you check a few things for me, and
write, to save Hilda. Did she stay two years at Bryn Mawr, or leave
during the second year. Did she go to London and settle there in 1911.
Did she call it that she resided in Switzerland after World War I, or
did she prefer to call it that she maintained residences both in London
and Switzerland. The chronology of all this between World War I and
II, I ought to be sure of. Not everything of course, but they asked
particularly about the residences. I think I shall not mention her
British citizenship, since she might some day, when the world is more
at ease again -- decide to take up her American papers again; and this
edition of the *Encyclopedia* will have a ten year life of its own before
being republished.

I finally got hold of some of the obituary notices of my father's
death, and enclose one on the chance that you and Hilda might be interest-
ed in it. There are a few errors, and my rank at Yale is incorrect, but
on the whole it gives a good idea of his life. Both my mother and Mrs
Bennett were delighted with their cards from you.

We had a happy Christmas; will write Hilda about it tomorrow. Mean-
while I must go back to Horace's Amy.

All love, as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

1 January 1957

Dearest Fido:

My first letters in 1957 are to you and Hilda, as they should be. Alas, what a year 1956 was! I am glad to see it flip over, except for the 70th birthday and your visit. That, I should not have wanted to miss, nor the trip down the Mississippi. But the affairs of the world one wishes one could forget.

I sit here now in my office, having just undone the various packages from London and Lausanne, and put away the letters and the volumes of *The Dial*. When you spoke of the record of Mahagonny, I presume you really meant the circular cardboard which originally came with the record, for it was all that came and has been put away. There was no disc itself. How gay it is; the Lenya record which Pup sent us for Christmas brought me in tune with it. I felt a little dizzy when I finished the job, and sit down with relief. Every one has had dreadful colds; now I have one. And I have colds so seldom, that when they come, they come with a vengeance. But I am taking pills and drops with at least a pious hope that they will help.

Oh Fido, I thought you knew me too well ever to think that it is all right to dispossess anyone from anything which they have worked for. What I tried to say was that in one way or another it seems inevitable that France will lose North Africa, and that it is natural that they should make every kind of effort and enlist every kind of help and means to keep from doing so. What I meant was that the old forms of empire were gone, as the very development of the British Commonwealth has shown, but that France had never seemed to make much of an effort to work out some similar cohesive force between themselves and the Arabs. My impression -- and I am not speaking as an American -- but as one who had to know something about North Africa during the early stages of the war -- has been that the French record, as one can read it in the reaction of the natives, has not been very good. Has it really become a "garden of the desert"? I have only been there a couple of times, and I know you know it better than I do. I should have said that the Coast was French, but not the interior.

At any rate, from what you say, France does seem to have become, or to have been, the leader, and this may make all the difference. I hope so, for I am sure that most Americans must feel a profound unhappiness at seeming to be evil not just because their foreign policy is fumbling and uncertain, which is bad enough, but because we are sinister and corrupt. I suppose this is why I so wish

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 H G S

that the papers and proof could come out in the open; for there
will be too many who will be led to say that France seeks a scape-
goat, and that Americans are being made to serve this purpose as
the Jews did for Hitler. I think most of us feel impotent. What
shall we do? On the one hand there is the amoral (no, immoral)
rapaciousness of which you speak; and on the other, that curious
and inexperienced naivete of idealism which makes us hope that the
world can live together. I could weep for myself and my generation.

I had a nice letter from Aurelia Hodgson, which I enclose
rather than try to copy. Return it some time when you are sending
over a batch

What fun it was to know that George did one of the rooms for
the Queen's Doll House. I never saw it, but it must have been en-
chanting. The whole thing was a kind of Poets' Reading in the
vernacular of the artist. It was a great compliment to him to have
been asked. Isn't it in the (oh, dear my mind is too tired, my
spirits too low) --I mean that huge museum, -- but nothing comes into
my mind but the Victoria and Albert

I ought to tear up this letter; it is too stupid. Except for
one thing, and that is that it brings you my love.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

5 January 1957

Dearest Fido,

What a superb description of the Christmas party chez
Brunner! You do have a flair for this sort of thing, and I wish
it could be worked into a novel. I fear not, however, for the many
and obvious reasons, not the least of which is Hilda's own idea of
using it sometime. Perhaps there will have to be the "secret" manu-
script tucked away against the future, like a Long Day's Journey into
Night.

And really I am pleased in the way that Rudolf is taking
over, and the promise of a good relationship between Hilda and him.
She speaks of him often in her letters, and always in an excellent
way. If she is ever able to get back her passport, then flips between
New York and Zurich may be the answer to our problem.

I hope Elsie has been recovering properly and that the
prognosis looks favorable, or reasonably so. I do agree that it looks
as though it would be difficult for her to manage Kenwin, for a good
bit at least. We can only wait and see.

Not a great deal to report from this end, other than the
chain of events with which you are only too familiar; but we did have
a busy Friday and Saturday this week, with the meeting of the Bollingen
Committee. Horace and Marya were up for it, and stayed in a college
suite; Dudley Fitts stayed with us, and the other two judges who could
come were R.P. Blackmur, and a young poet named Richard Wilbur. I gather
from Fitts and Gregory that Hilda would very likely have gotten the
award if it had not been the debarring factor of her citizenship, but in
the end they gave it to Cummings, who certainly deserves it.

Hilda had two splendid reviews of her book in the January
Poetry, and I sent her one copy of it and will send my subscription copy
to you when it arrives. Horace confirmed that it had gone into a second
printing.

The Gregoris seemed well, do not hear from Patrick very
often, and I told them only that you sometimes passed on in your letters
news of him and that he was well.

You have never spoken of the Chandharan book and whether or
not you liked it. Do let me know.

The secretary has been filling letters and putting them in
shape as one has to do periodically, and I find to my embarrassment that
I do not know (perhaps because my mind is tired) certain last names which
I know you have given me before. Here is her list. Could you tell me

the appropriate family name for filing purposes?

Ethel (she has always just been Ethel, and Doris's sister)
Dean (daughter)
Marie
Caroline
Hilary

John (Stubblegrove, Denham)

Robin

Lorna

and Robert's friend). What of him?

Marie Anne

Neil

Manon

Isn't this silly of me?

The secretary has also been retyping the manuscript of THE GATE since Helen said it would be difficult for the printers to work from flimsies, and there were several typographical errors which were natural enough. By the way I took the liberty of saying that the children were sitting on the deck, rather than on the ground, on the last page once they were on board the boat.

But I shall now have to be writing the front jacket matter for the book, so if you have any ideas for what you would like stressed in the way of theme, or what Passtum has meant to you, etc --much as we have done for earlier jacket material -- jot it down and send along.

I shall get at Artemis now, and will write you shortly.

By the way, last night I saw an English publication, by Macmillan's which looks wonderfully interesting for you. I will borrow my friend's copy here. It is R.J.C. Atkinson's *Stonehenge*, a really superb archaeological study of its construction and significance. Fifteen shillings, I think.

And I thought you would be interested in the enclosed summary of the results of the rockets at Churchill.

All love as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

9 January 1957

Dearest Fido:

I like to think of you and George in Lugano together. He is truly looking forward to it, and to Paipa. I had such a nice letter from him just a few days ago. I showed it to Susan, who exclaimed: "What a fine person he is!"

It was sad to hear of Amenzind's death, but I trust the Bristol will not be like our little Istambul Pera Palast. Do you remember how each item was ticketed for appraisal, the owner having just drunk himself to death out of grief for his cat's decease. But do not put too permanent a cast on what may prove to be only a temporary confusion at the Bristol. In any event I think it will be worth a try for Hilda once she can navigate. One fears only the hill, but I believe there is a pleasant garden by the Bristol itself.

Tonight's announcement of Eden's resignation was a sudden shock; one should have been warned, I presume, by the lull in English press releases. Did Eisenhower's ambiguous announcements have something to do with it, I wonder. I doubt that anything has been clarified. Butler will be the new P.M., I imagine.

I envy the boys and their trip to South America, though I have never been there. If I have a curiosity it is not for Chile but for Peru, and the Incan ruins. So will you, once we have gotten you to Yucatan. But, as you say, this is not South America as such, which I always imagine to be Birmingham with palm trees.

Indeed, what can one do for and with Robert? I had been wanting to ask what had developed in that direction. Baylis might be able to help, but if Robert is in real trouble it might take someone as tough as Philip to put it straight to him. Staright to him, that is, and then straight to whomever it is that is doing the blackmailing. I agree, it seems very much that way, and if so then p.a. is not the cure at the first instance. After all a blackmailer can be threatened by as strong a person as Philip; what they thrive on is the sort of weakness which has always been Robert's nemesis. It has been strangely apropos to read his letters to Hilda in the batch you sent me (I have not mentioned them to her). He has been like a little boy always desperate for love. The absence of a father was traumatic, and his affairs were not so much ones of the heart or the flesh, as to find someone who would give him affection, the affection of a man for a boy. This being increasingly impossible to express, he could find it only as he could serve tea, for example, to George; for I suspect Robert of being fundamentally conservative in a middle class way, not as a creature of any passion.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

12 January 1957

Dearest Fido:

The news of the week, forgetting for the moment the matter of the change of Prime Minister, seems to be the marriage of "our Tom" to his secretary. I imagine it must have surprised you as much as it did all of us, though Gallup has met her and says she is very nice. Our own private view is that Eliot must have done this at least partly to escape from John Hayward, who must have been an increasing burden on him --and like many people in such a situation become more and more possessive. But to be married at 6:45 A.M.! I presume this must be very high church indeed, and it certainly does leave plenty of time for a wedding breakfast. You must not fail to tell me Edith's comments.

The weather has continued to be wretched: the temperature close to 10°, and some snow and much ice on the roads. My cold, which I thought I had buried under tons of pills, has reasserted itself in sniffles; but perhaps this is because I have been up too late most of the week, Susan having been in New York, and am more than a little tired. (Susan has just called to announce her return, saying that she too has a cold as a souvenir of her time in town).

The Bollingen Committee met today and gave their poetry prize to Allen Tate. Not quite unnaturally, since John Crowe Ransom and Robert Lowell, who were two of the five judges, were (a) his cher maitre and (b) his favorite pupil. I had rather hoped that Cummings might at last be given an award, but it didn't work out that way. He really has never been given any prize of national significance. There was a dinner party for the committee last night, which was pleasant. My friend Dudley Fitts was down, Leonie Adams was on hand, and so was Thornton Wilder. The talk was very good indeed.

Thursday night there was a harpsichord recital by Ralph Airkpatrick, and I was reminded of those pleasant teas at Violet Gordon "odenhouse's, to which the Sitwells introduced me. Those teas, Edith's salon, and especially my Sunday suppers at Lowndes were the high spots of the war for me -- the only recreation I could permit myself.

Again my affectionate greetings to George, and as always my love to you.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

6 June 1957

Dearest Angahyakkahjuak,

I begin to practise my sullabics even though
still no word from the New Hampshire office. I only hope all is well,
and that there will not suddenly come word that not enough passengers
signed up. If that should happen I'll get on the phone to the Hudson's
Pay Company. Meanwhile one waits.

I still chuckle about the interview, but fortu-
nately we won't have to worry about food. Wilkinson is reassuring. He
went on from Churchill to one of our first stops, where he found a thin
aesthetic Eskimo. "He pulled a paper-wrapped parcel from under his parka
and set it on the floor at his feet. He unwrapped the parcel to disclose
a good-sized rump of raw caribou meat and, taking a small knife from an
over-the-shoulder pouch, he settled down to eat. I watched, fascinated.
There was a moment's pause, for the selection of a cut, a few quick move-
ments of the knife, and a large piece of meat was popped into his mouth.
He rolled it around, then gave a blink and a tremendous swallow, and the
meat slid reluctantly down his throat. This continued for perhaps five
minutes during which time he must have consumed three pounds of meat.
Then he returned the knife to his pouch, wrapped the remainder of the
meat and leaned back against the wall. He gave one tremendous belch and
grinned at me once more."

This will give you very interesting habits indeed
against your return to Kenwin, and Elsie should find housekeeping easier
after you have gone Eskimo!

Thought you would be interested in the *Tribune*
review of the new Duggan, since Bruun so much admired your *October*. No
one seems to have been keen on this side about Duggan's latest. One
catches the American suspicion in the final paragraph of the novel-a-year.
But it doesn't seem to matter in what field, when they come too frequently
off the press, the American public can't get used to it. As I told you,
we have no equivalent market for Jocalyn's steady output.

Must start off tomorrow for a Friday evening and
"Saturday meeting of the Andover alumni board, but will go up early in order
to put in a lick or two on Hawthorne at Salem. At least I can arrange for
having some birth and death dates researched for me. There is no point in
my doing it, but I shall have to explain things before they start. Saturday
night I shall go for overnight to Gardner to see my mother. It makes a good
chance on the way back.

I am eager to know the results of the x-ray.

Love,

Norrn

12 January 1957

Dearest Fido,

All apostolic blessings on you and St Giorgio for your holiday, and full steam ahead for the hours which you can spend on your manuscripts. I wrote you a longish letter last weekend, to Kenwin, which I hope will have been forwarded; but I waited then until I knew for certain that it was the Bristol to which you were going, and knew that only by your letter of the 6th which (for some unknown and unusual reason) only arrived here on Thursday afternoon.

Perhaps the storms delayed the planes, for Tuesday afternoon it began to snow, and more than fourteen-and-a-half inches on the level fall before it stopped on Wednesday, and you can imagine what havoc all this raised. Cars were stuck at the curbs or abandoned in mid-road, drifts were allowed to accumulate before being plowed, and then the temperature of 10° froze it quite unbreakably. We were trapped by the drifts which blew up in front of the garage door, or fell there from the converging roofs, so that it was not until Thursday night that we could have our driveway or walks ploughed. In order to get to my classes I dragged out all my arctic geer: re-lined trousers, blue navy shirts, parka and boots, and was the only appropriately clad figure on the streets. I was glad enough for the extra warmth too, when I had to wait fifty minutes at a blowy corner, that night, while I waited for a bus to take me home.

Susan had been in New York since Monday morning at the national meeting of the state presidents of garden clubs, but their business was done early and she managed to take a noon train back on Tuesday, arriving at the beginning of the storm. I had to be in New York on Tuesday also, for a conference about the revision of the Oxford Anthology (which I one of my winter's chores); it began snowing there late in the afternoon, not comparably with New Haven where it was the heaviest snowfall in ten years, but even so I managed to get my black-bryher into the driveway, and then by a little shovel-ing into the garage just in the nick of time.

Otherwise, or because of this, we have not done much during the week until Friday night when I took Susan and her mother and a courtesy aunt to the theatre to see a new production of a play made (cleverly but not wholly successfully) from Anderson's *Winesburg, Ohio*. Fortunately the producer was not around, so that I wasn't committed to a statement about it, and Mrs Anderson who had been here for the opening night last Saturday had written me a tearful letter about how bad it was. It wasn't that bad, actually. Then last night some friends came, and appropriately I showed them the slides to illustrate my talk on "With Bryher in the Arctic."

Yesterday's mail brought a long narrow package from you which completely bewildered me in guessing its contents before I opened it. But when I did I lifted my lead-dog head and barked my thanks. You never told me you were sending the little carved figure of the Greenlander, or if you

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

12 November 1957

Dearest Fido,

What a weekend and follow-up. I came back this morning, and of course had a deskfull for my attention. Not that anything was unhappy in the last few days, but simply crowded. Last Thursday night I left here at 4:15 and drove to Gloucester (in Massachusetts) where I arrived at 8:30 to see Benet's widow about her husband's papers, the new contract for the revision of the Oxford Anthology, and a man who is writing Bill Benet's biography. I let there at 11, and drove to Salem where I spent the night, and the next day at the Essex Institute working on Hawthorne. Then that late afternoon to Andover, and a meeting of the Alumni Council that night and Saturday morning. While the others drove to Exeter for the football game in the afternoon, I went back to Salem and worked again. Another meeting that night and Sunday morning, and I got back to New Haven at 6 in the evening, rather exhausted. Monday morning in the office, and then in the afternoon I drove to Gardner where last night I gave a talk on Mark Twain and our trip down the Mississippi to the women's College Club, a gesture towards the home town, my sister, etc. But it was pleasant, the place was crowded and therefore a success from the local point of view, and my mother mustered her strength sufficiently to hear me, which pleased her of course. She seemed a little better, though very very frail, but her spirits are excellent and that is the main thing.

A letter from you was waiting for me, and as I recall there was one on Monday too. They are all beside me at any rate, and I will try to patch together my answers.

I was startled to find that Doris was actually in New York, for we had heard nothing. But Susan is almost certain to be going to the Waldorf for her hair this week, and will try to get in touch with her and discover her plans. We certainly want her to come up before she leaves.

I was sorry about the confusion in regard to the manuscript of GATE. Do remember, if things come to too much of a pass, that my secretary can always copy, and this may be eventually a sensible solution since two copies are always best for me: one for the printer and the other to keep here against the time when proof comes. I shall be glad to have it, since I gather from Helen's letter, in the last batch, that she plans a spring publication. Does she have the necessary photograph from *slay for the back of the jacket? I gather it has been sent to her directly.

The news of Hilda's improvement cheers me of course, and I do wish (as you do) that something might be arranged for her to go to Lugano for a change of scene. But I agree that a nurse is necessary; although expensive, would it be wise to have both a nurse and Joan in order to take the curse off. Do tell me some details about the row you speak of between Hilda and Heydt, since when the latter comes over I rather need to be in the know on such matters. It keeps me from giving, unwittingly, any encouragement on either side, and I propose to keep Heydt a little under the thumb so as to

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

to be able to use him when and as seems wise. But I think you and I bark
in unison on this.

Two beautiful Morris vellums have arrived: the Beowulf and The Well at the World's End which are a joy simply to touch. I have a special little glassed bookcase for them, so the problem of dust will be eliminated. Vellum is a little tricky on that score. I rather suspect that it would be safe to send out the Chaucer, if you want to have it with the others, but Hilda's present to you you may want to keep for the time being. Three large packages from Meggs have come, but have not yet been unpacked. I shall clear extra space in the shelves here to make room for them at the end of the week. The Morris pamphlets have not yet arrived, but should be here shortly. I will put in the file cabinets, unless I decide to have a slip case made for all of them when I know how many there will be.

You asked about the state of the savings account. The sum now there is 13,541.97 (counting the last interest payment of 222.29, which should be roughly repeated at Dec 31), and will be increased by the check for 5000 which has arrived and I will deposit. It is difficult to say just what the needs will be against it, since I will not know the Ghandara charges until the book is actually published, later this month or early in December. The only additional large charge now in view will be for the Hidgsons at Christmas, and because of her arm's breaking and loss of working time I presume we ought to give 1500 again this year. You may remember we increased it last year because she could not work in the dead of winter. Of course if you really want to pile up the reserves, I could always buy some Johnson mutual stock, pay the dividends (higher than for a savings account by two or three percent) into the savings account as they come, and then be in a position to sell the mutual stocks if and when the reserve drops. This of course only if you feel a real danger of any freeze. But I shall be in a better position to know whether more is needed once I get the Ghandara charges. The GATE will not cost us anything, nor should there be Hilda charges for some time.

To repeat myself about Hilda's city life, and to correct the false impression I gave you: I do agree that she is a seashore or country girl in summers, but I think winters she needs the adjacency of tea spots, museums, and an occasional movie even when she obly contemplates rather than actually uses them. I think the Schaffners do not quite differentiate between her living in the same metropolis and being in the same house with them. But it will work out, it will have to.

Have had a terrific day at the desk, and much has been cleared away. But tomorrow I shall have to teach a class again, and the whirl continues. Sometimes I wish we were both back in the north again.

All love, my dear,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 November 1957

Dearest Fido,

No new letters from you since I wrote you last, and little
out of the way has happened here. So one makes notes rather than letters,
and hopes that you have not fallen ill with the flu or other malaise.

A package came with two arctic books from you, and Susan has
them now. She is the real first reader and expert now on the literary
accounts, while I find it hard to keep up with the daily mail.

We were, as I told you, delighted to know that Boris was in
New York, and Susan lunched with her Friday at the "aldorf. I was surprised
to know that she had already been here two weeks, since you had not told of
her departure, and we had not heard a peep out of her. Susan thought she
looked well and seemed to be in good spirits, seeing John and Ferdita
constantly and taking innumerable pills which seemed to be doing her good.
Even her vision was improved, although the glass doors in the "aldorf
fooled her by their presence. "ut of course they sometimes do me also.
She is to stay three weeks longer, and we will try to have her come up
before she goes, for the fun of seeing her and the chance to show her the
slides of our summer's trip. She gave Susan the Montaigne, which I shall
take to the Library tomorrow morning to be catalogued. What a beautiful
copy it is, and it does help to round out the picture of the age. It
occurred to me that if Maggs ever had a good Dryden folio it might not
be an bad idea to add such a first folio by him to the other dramatists.
"We have B&F, Jonson, and Shakespeare; to add Dryden would be to round out
the greats of the century, even if he is a little later. "Dryden's adoptions
of Shakespeare's plays are, as it happens, represented by several quarto
editions, and the first folio would round them out also. I believe the
cost is only a hundred dollars or so, at least for the 1702 edition which
Yale just recently bought a copy of.

Another check for 10 dollars for Hilda, in payment of a permissions
fee, has come in, and she still does not tell me what she wants done with
such payments. I have the 200 from Grove, fifty from the Atlantic, and there
will be a payment from Poetry Magazine. I could set up a little savings
account, separate from it. Of course I have to pay income tax on these,
and have paid the costs of the free copies of the Selected Poems, but I
think it is just as easy to do this from the account we already have. What
do you think I should do?

Did I ever tell you how successful my bootful of tundra turned
out to be? Susan made a little flat bowl of it, putting the stone owl
beside it as a companion piece, and the lichen burst out with fresh green
shoots, the willow burst into a cloud of white down, and it has lasted even
until now in our house in town. Her garden club friends especially have
been interested in it. I have at last today written Horst and Norton, sending
them copies of the arctic flora book and the little Collins guide (which has
just arrived from Mexico, and one of which I am sending you by surface), as

well as a copy of the interview in the Register. I had waited until these
were all here before communicating to them. I also sent a copy of the Collins
to Grunow, since he asked for it, but not the interview nor did I mention
the photographs since he had seemed so surly and reluctant when I mentioned
his photographs to him. Still not a peep from Moody, and next weekend I
shall write and send him a few things in the hope that this will rouse him
to communication. I have my doubts though!

The Tunisian arms situation between France on the one side and Great Britain and the States on the other, seems bound to end in trouble. Since Tunisia is next door neighbor to Algeria, and you feel confidence in France's ability to rule the North African Coast, I imagine you will feel both England and the States should have kept out, even at the risk of Russian and Egyptian liaison. I only wish I could have the same confidence in France that you feel, but I think both her economy and her morale grows steadily worse.

But I imagine we would both agree that the Queen is wrong in abolishing the presentations at court in favor of the immense garden parties. A presentation means nothing to me whatsoever, but it does to many, and it has been a successful appeal to snobbery which has made many Englishmen work hard and ethically for the government in the hope of achieving just such a goal for themselves. Remove the goal and you remove the incentive! Even the Germans used to know that social rewards kept younger sons and nouveau riche in the army, for example. We have lost in the quality of our civil and military servants because the only rewards are in pay and temporary fame. I begin more and more to agree with Muggeridge and the others, that the British throne is being badly advised in such matters, and that one ought to spell Queen with an initial capital letter.

All love as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

18 November 1957

Dearest Husky,

I posted you a letter last night, but hasten to feed you (more than twice a week) with the pages from the memoirs which you asked for. The pagination on the copy should actually cover (as it does in fact) the missing pages. I have simply made one little insertion because my secretary was puzzled (a) at what the child was doing in what otherwise seemed to be a rug-shop, and (b) curious as to what the little ivory and ebony blocks were for. Faced with the problem, so was I. You may want to expand a little by a phrase or two.

Two yellow envelopes of letters came today, and I was interested in the details of Doris's last days with John. It is sad, but I think far better for her this way. And I am relieved to know that the liquidation is coming through. Doris simply could not cope with any more of this, nor can one do anything but understand her reluctance for any course of action save that of letting the present state of affairs drift on. I was interested, and a little perturbed, also, to read the details of schloss Brunner, and the bedtailment of Hilda by the girls. In my last letter I urged her to take a nurse, and Joan, with her for a few weeks at Lugano--possibly for over Christmas. One cannot urge too hard, of course, or she balks.

No hurry about Coigny's copy of the *Gate*, though I am eager to see it. Better, I think, to send *both* copies to me rather than the top carbon to Helen. I will pass on the first copy to her after I have looked it over.

The announcement of Willy Maugham's request was on page 1 of the *Times*, and I had clipped his request (to Philip's brother Alexander?) to file with my folder of literary executor's problems. His request is not legally binding of course, and I have no intention of destroying the several letters he once wrote to me. Nor, I imagine, will anyone else. But one sympathizes.

Oddly, I am pleased that Elsie's paralysis has been diagnosed as it has, since this will take the winds a little out of the psychosomatic sail. At least the diagnosis has its own reverse tactics, which will be helpful.

Your Rosemary sounds interesting. Should we try her out on the dogsled?

A nice note in from Marianne in answer to our greetings for her 70th.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

26 November 1957

Dearest Fido,

A few days have lapsed, but do forgive. One got, somehow,
caught up in a stream of things; and one is glad of Thanksgiving and the
free Friday and Saturday when Yale is closed.

Last Friday night, we dined with Mrs. Bennett and then went
to the theatre, our first this year (except for Wednesday night when we
saw Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" put on by the Yale Dramat, of whose
advisory board I am a member). The Friday night show, opening here before
Broadway, was undistinguished as a play and a little disheartening: the
story of an older woman who slipped back into childhood in one stage for
each act. The result was more clinical than moving; but the lead was an
excellent actress.

Saturday was the Harvard football game (Yale's great rivalry),
and because of the crowds which come to New Haven I did not try to go to
the office in the morning, but worked about the house. Yale won, 54-0,
the largest score in history; and the result was a little embarrassing.
It was cold, but. Susan and I both braved it, I in my red-lined pants, my
heavy blue sailor's shirt, long woolly, and my parka. As you can see, the
Arctic is still occasionally with me! I enclose a little clipping from the
papers, of left-overs from the interview. I needn't remind you that the
recipes came from the little leaflet given us at Toronto at the fair. A
copy of THE BEAVER arrived this morning, but is entirely devoted to York
Factory, and I will not send on unless you wish. You can catch up when you
come next. Also a copy of the Oblate fathers' ESKIMO, which you will also
be getting. I fear it is really interesting, and one gets closer to the
scenes we know, (if one can read between the lines). Next week on television
there is to be a half-hour film of the Oblates at Pelley Bay, which I shall
not miss, and perhaps I will write another billet doux to our lay brother at
Churchill after I have seen it. I did write to Moody also, and sent him some
books last week, but not a peep from any of the crew so far. A new list of
publications by the Queen's Printer came today from Toronto, and I think I
shall order ARCTIC CANADA FROM THE AIR, but it is eight dollars and I think
one between us will be enough. My idea is that when you write on the north,
I can send over whatever you need. I do check, and will, to see that we do
not duplicate.

Susan is in New York again today and will phone Doris to see
when we can get her up. We tried both for last Sunday and next to have her
as John and Pup come up, but they were involved with his brother last week,
and a trip to Long Island from Friday to Sunday. I hope she will stay longer,
but suppose she wants to be with her grandchildren at Christmas. But it is
better for her at the moment to be on this side.

Poor Heydt, if Melitta should descend on him for Christmas. He will either prefer to be with Hilda, back at Stuttgart with his family, or with his boy friend; although if Hilda should go to Lugano, of course he might want to pop in there. But I am glad that you agree that we should make the most of Heydt while he is still in Zurich, and his presence in New York would of course be a god-send if Hilda does come over either for visits or more permanently. I do not worry so much now about any embarrassing emotional tie-up between them--I think the earlier incident clarified that. The little there is won't hurt, and meanwhile you and I can breathe a little easier.

I had not heard from Hilda for almost a fortnight, when yesterday (just as I was leaving for Hartford for the day, at the Mark Twain House) a fat envelope came with an EXCELLENT series of poems on an owl. I have had copied, as she requested and am sending a set back to her. They are really fine, and have a great verve. You will like them as much as I do. I think the stimulus of placing a few poems helped, and I urged her for more without dreaming how quickly I would get them. I really am excited; they are a little off-beat, which may be a good thing. I think so for the moment, anyhow.

Elsie is a problem; and I wish circumstances were such that one could get her over for a Prutting. But I suspect this is not advisable in her case. However I rather fancy your keeping Alenwin open this winter; it does not commit you. George would love to come, and perhaps could return with you after your jaunt to England. One thing I do know, and that is that Alenwin would be ideal for your memotis, partly because you would not be annoyed by stresses outside, and mostly because your material is at hand.

Four more small Morris volumes came today, for which thanks. What a stupidity about the Chaucer. Wouldn't it really be better then to send them by other than bookpost, even if more expensive. There must be many volumes sent under similar conditions by Swiss antiquariats, so that it is safe enough. And even if more expensive, because of rates and packaging, it would still be cheaper and more convenient than to add the nuisance and extra luggage rates if one tried to carry by hand. Just have them professionally packed for this kind of shipment other than bookpost.

Was startled to get from Mallorca a note from Edward Dahlberg, trying to get me to buy a fifty dollar de luxe edition of his new "Sorrows of Priapus." This kind of de luxe sorrow is not for me; one has enough sorrow anyhow. But (I have never met him), he writes "You seem to be the friend of my quondam friends. ... I am no Sermon-on-the-Mount man. Look at poor McAlmon. I did all I could to help him, scarce believing in him at that. Not a soul went to see him at Desert Hot Springs, a wrteched spa of san and the sun of Acheron for tubercular plumbers, huskies and alcoholic wastrels. But you couldn't help him, for he was as bitter as the waters of March. Poor McAlmon cursed everybody, man, the ground and the fruits thereof." Quite a letter. I gather Dahlberg is a little bitter himself, and I daresay he needs what money he can get. I shall write him a polite answer some day.

All love,
Norman

30 November 1957

Dearest Fido,

Thanksgiving over, and I am now basking in the three following days when there are no undergraduates (or nearly none) on the campus. Yesterday I finished (or at least drafted) the 2500-word biography of Hawthorne for the encyclopædia--the last one due them, though this one lags for almost a year. Since then I have been signing letters about scholarship applications for next year, finishing the scheduling of my proposed plans for the use of each room in the Mark Twain House renovation, paying bills, reading class papers, and the like. Each thing done sets up a little cry of hurrah!

Our dinner at Mrs Bennett's was pleasant: some twenty persons there, and two 26-pound turkeys to feed them. More than enough, you can be sure. My only sadness came in the morning when I called my mother on the phone to wish her well for the day, and was startled at how weak her voice was and how frail she seemed. My sister called last night to say that my mother fell twice on Thursday, and the doctors say has suffered a slight shock, though perhaps this actually happened the day before. Her voice is thick, and she is now in bed with a nurse. It is very sad, and I fear she will not live out the winter; though she shows such vitality and recuperative power that I hope this will not prove true. She doesn't seem to realize what has happened, and only thinks she is tired.

Susan was in New York on Tuesday and tried without success to get Doris on the phone; but did reach her by phone Wednesday morning, in the hope that we could get her to come to New Haven for overnight, or just for dinner or lunch if this were better. (I wanted particularly to see her and to show her the arctic pictures). But she said she could not, that she was taking powerhouse pills and that Prutting did not want her to move much. Susan thinks she may be a little frightened of going by train and falling, which was the reason we had hoped the Schaffners could bring her here by car. Doris has her passage back as planned, but I think she neither goes nor could stay, with any happiness.

Presume that *Gate* will soon be on its way here, and hope you sent both copies to me. But it doesn't matter if you have; I can get Helen to send hers up.

BOTHERATION! I was just interrupted by a phone call from a former, unknown student (but friendly) who read a long account in the *Nation* of a visit to Pound at St Elizabeth's, in which near the beginning, Pound tells his visitor (who was about to go to Italy and Dahmatia) that he should see me because of my interest in Byzantine mosaics and because I could confirm what Pound had said to the visitor about Greek manuscripts in Istanbul. Pound added that I was on the advisory board of the Square Dollar series. A couple of pages later (it was a long article), the writer

began to talk about Kaspar, one of the original publishers of, the Series, thereby implying that the series was segregationist and anti-semitic (which it is not). (When Kaspar began his segregationist activities I wrote and asked to have my name taken off the board, but the reply was that he had nothing to do with it and his name hadn't been on the last book; as indeed I found it hadn't.) And of course, readers of the article seem to feel that guilt by association holds true for me. (Alas, Horton, the other editor, who still stays with the series, has unpalatable views if quoted correctly.) Well this boy wants to know what is up with his old favorite teacher. Helen Wolff wanted to know. The Yale News wants to run an article or interview, two of the Jewish boys on the board being irked by the so-called stain on my soul. I have ordered a couple of copies of the Nation, and will send you one when it comes. And show to Hilda. You might as well be informed. God knows I am neither anti-semitic nor segregationist, as my record shows; but I shall grow weary of explaining this. Poor Pound, it does so please him to make references to his respectable friends!

I don't think I ever mentioned Sylvia's letter about her newest troubles. It really is a pity that the lawyer's papers should have been allowed to roam about like this, even though they legally belong to him. But, if you want, assure her that I know the librarian at Buffalo, and, I am sure, could have restrictions placed on the private concerns of Sylvia and her family. I mean, on anyone's seeing them. Prescott does seem to be a heel; I am more than ever glad that I refused to let him have photostats of Joyce's letters to McAlmon.

In sending off the lists of addresses to which copies of the Chandara book should go with your compliments, I did add the Gregories and the Hodgsons. Horace and Marya would be hurt, even though the book isn't quite their dish; and old Rafe would love leafing it over while he sits huddled in his layers of wool. What about Lethbridge? I will add his name if you want.

I think I told you that Sachie's new book arrived, for which my thanks. I was happy to see his dedication to you.

By the way, the Kennedy and Farmer bibliography of Henty which you bought in April of '56, never did come from Maggs or elsewhere. Should I order another copy?

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

2 December 1957

Dearest Fido,

Just a note to reach you while you are in London, though
nothing of any great urgency, except to say that in this morning's
mail was a letter from Rose Odle asking if Yale would like D.R.'s
books, correspondence, etc. Naturally I have written back a delighted
and grateful letter, not simply because they will be at Yale but be-
cause one does have the feeling that they will be better taken care
of on this side, and even more importantly will be used. I have suggest-
ed to her that because of Edel's biography and critical study, the
use of the unpublished material ought to be reserved for him, or until
he has finished should be examined only with his permission. R.O.
spoke of my having Hilda's letters from D.R., but I don't know whether
one should speak to Hilda about giving them at this time. But do you
want to give yours and the ms, at the same time that R.O. gives the
rest. I know you spoke to me once about the possibility of letting
similar papers go when the writer of them was dead. I have not of
course mentioned this in my letter to R.O.

I wrote to you on Sunday, but you will have when you return
to Switzerland. We had a pleasant Thanksgiving dinner at Mrs "ennett's,
some twenty in all. And the only unhappy note in the long weekend was
the news that my mother had a slight stroke (she does not realize this,
but is in bed with a nurse) either Thanksgiving morning or the day be-
fore. I had spoken with her by phone Thanksgiving morning, and was
troubled by the weariness of her voice. One can only see what will
happen. I have been told not to go up, lest she be frightened.

I am relieved that Alsie is to be in the clinic, where she
can have a true going-over. Otherwise one will be always in the dark.
Hilda, by the way, wrote me about not going to Lugano, and I rather
think she has made up her mind. Partly, I imagine, because Melitta will
be involving Heydt.

No special errands for me in London; although you might ask
Maggie if they did send the "enty bibliography. It has never come. Also
if they have a good first of Golding's translation of the *Metamorphosis*
which would fill a gap in the collection. And do look at Bumpus to see
if they can get a copy of Marjorie Black's childrens book on the eskimos.
She (Bill Benet's widow) told me that Stefansson had helped her with it,
her first book, and that it had just been reprinted in England. You might
be amused.

Am heartbroken, because tonight on the tv there is a half hour
film on the Oblate fathers at Pelly Bay, and I have to go, instead, to
a meeting of chairmen of departments which publish learned series of
dissertations. Why did they set such a meeting for tonight of all nights?

Greet Rita and my friends, and all love to yourself.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

7 December 1957

Dearest Fido,

A gloomy, rainy day; and I am rather provoked because I agreed to take a group of Italians to Hartford this afternoon to see the Mark Twain House, and although they were to be here at two, it is now half-past, and no one has appeared.

8 December 1957

Dearest Fido (again),

Maybe there is no better way of getting people to come than to send up a wail of despair, as I did yesterday. I'd have been happier of course, if they hadn't come at all, so that I could have worked at my desk as I have had to do today, correcting papers, finishing the tucking of edges on the little biographical sketch of Hawthorne for the encyclopedia, paying a few bills and the like. Letters I have not permitted myself the luxury of until now.

But yesterday I did, at any rate, take the carload of four to
Hartford, through the rain and on the way home through the dark. Two of
them were foreign students of mine; the other two were Italfans on fellowship
at Princeton, here for the weekend and having been promised Hartford. Some-
thing in me (much like something in you) couldn't stand their disappointment
in finding how difficult it was to get there, so I went. At any rate I let
the curator take them around while I explored and checked up on the plans I
had made for the future use of the rooms.

Friday night I had taken Susan to the first Assembly for the
presentation of this year's crop of debutantes, and we had stayed until
one o'clock and so were glad enough to spend last night at home, where I
dozed a bit, exhausted from my hour's trip up and hour's trip back, with
jammer jammer all the way, and then read on in a dissertation about the
Engineer's Corp in the west.

I am of course eager to hear about London, and whether you
were able to go on to Copenhagen; but all this will come in the course of
time. I had a second note on Friday from Brother Errant, at Churchill,
saying that he had a little walrus carved out of green stone for me, and
(so far as I could gather from his atrocious English--why won't he write
French to me?) several of the little things I was interested in in the
collection at the Oblate Museum, which he will sell me for from 20-35
dollars. I feel a little like Satan as a tempter, save that I suspect
the Oblates themselves haven't got the slightest objection to taking in
a penny or two for what they get from the eskimos. These new things have
just come in, and are presumably duplicates. Presumably, too, the Canadian
Customs will not open anything so sacrosanct as a bundle send from the
Apostolic Vicarage. I hope you won't feel ashamed of me.

The news of Elsie's diagnosis is troubling, and you must let
me know how things progress. Perhaps I have been unfair in thinking so
much of her trouble has been jealousy at root. I am grateful that Eric

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

is in a position to handle. One can only see what will develop. But what an incredible year you have had! I can't help but be glad that we did manage to get the Arctic in for your sake as well as mine. Rough as it was, complicated as it was, it was still the only kind of violent change we could have had. So far as I am concerned of course it was an experience of the first importance, and at the year's end I cannot thank you enough not only for giving the trip to me but also, perhaps especially, for going along with me. On both scores it would have been otherwise impossible. I think so it was birthday and Christmas presents for now and several years to come. Let it be that -- my thanks will go on indefinitely.

The Gandhara book will be waiting for you at Kenwin when you return, and I hope you will think it worth all the waiting for and all the support you gave it. Do drop a note to Wolff to thank him; he is very proud of it. Islay sent me a little dedicatory slip to stick in my copy, which was kind of him. We have so enjoyed the Christmas card with its photograph of what we suppose to be one of their cats on it.

And enjoyed your card too, which was particularly nostalgic. I see you on the sled and myself heaving as lead dog.

Two packages of William Morris books came in this week's mail, and are safely at home with the others, almost filling a little bookcase (glassed-in) of their own. I am anxious for you to see.

And of course the usual envelopes of general correspondence. I was glad to see that Patrick was enjoying Paris apparently, and I should gather he was doing a little writing on his own from the literary manner of his style. Should one put him in touch with Sylvia, or is it better to let her alone while she works on her autobiography. Heyditch's letter on Joan was most informative. He wrote me a note, and is apparently quite set on and eager to get back to the States.

But the nicest of all was the picture of Vera Bryer which I have framed for over my desk, and explain to all that this is an early likeness of the well-known English novelist. "You see, she has always loved the sea; that is why she wears a yachting cap and has her skirt at high tide!

All love as always.

1957

13 December

Dear Fido,

Your letter of the 10th in today's mail, and I could say with delight as the success of your Copenhagen trip. But of all this I'll write & write until next week, since tomorrow I have & go to Sunday. And over for a meeting then and on Sunday. Hope if the weather improves (it is better cold and snowing most of the time) to stop and see my mother. Gardener on my way back to see my mother. When Monday at lunch for the rest of the day to Hartford for a Mark Twain meeting, and on Wednesday to New York again.

Now older Americans have arrived, and the Chaucer, while I love not unfetched. And the Rasmussen which looks most exciting. And my Christmas envelope from Copenhagen, which I will not open until the day it is intended for. (Though how I can write, I cannot write.)

Clara stop Tuesday, and I shall breathe again - but meanwhile I can go off and thanks and love.

Norman

CHURCHILL HOTEL

MANITOBA'S MOST NORTHERN HOTEL

CROSS THE "BARREN LANDS"
VISIT HISTORIC CHURCHILL
ON THE COAST OF
HUDSON BAY

ENJOY THE THRILL OF A
WHITE WHALE HUNT
"KING SPORT" OF THE
SUB-ARCTIC

HUNTING AND FISHING PARTIES ARRANGED

CHURCHILL, MAN.

FULLY LICENSED

21 December 1957

22 ROOMS
HOT AND COLD
RUNNING WATER

Dearest Fido,

RESTAURANT AND
DINING ROOM

TAXI SERVICE
IN CONNECTION
WITH HOTEL

AGENTS FOR
C.P. AIRLINES LTD.

very first.

How could I wrote more appropriately than on such
stationery at Christmas to thank you for the gift which put it
in my hands and has done so much to enlarge my experience and
deepen our relationship with each other. I sent off a little
group of colored photographs to Georgio, showing you in front
of the tent at Chesterfield, looking out over the icepack in
the mouth of the Inlet, paddling in the water at Churchill --
so many of the moments and gestures that keep bringing it all
back to me with such pleasure and such gratitude. Surely of
all the wonderful things you have done for me -- which I could
hardly hope to count in all their plenitude of affection --
our summer teamed together in the dogteam must be among the

And now you speak of the possibilities of Greenland,
and how exciting the possibility seems -- that is, of course, if you will go with
me. For I should be no lead dog of myself, and can pull well only when we make a
team. Actually, what with our little knowledge of Danish, and -- to be frank --
our inexperience in interior exploration, I wonder if the round trip voyage you
describe would not, after all, not only be simplest but best. Especially now that
we have the referential control of last summer, so that we will know what we are
looking for, what questions to ask, what theories to roll over in our minds. A few
days in each port will give us a sense of the whole, let us feel the contours of
Greenland, and let us rest and write. The voyage itself, both ways, ought to be filled
with stories to listen to, and a sense of what binds Denmark to its colony. I would
suggest that I at least, and preferably you also, might spend a week together in
Copenhagen before sailing out, while we studied the museum, were briefed by the
Museum archaeologists, and generally prepared ourselves. But perhaps we had best
wait for a bit before deciding.

Meanwhile of course I have heard nothing from the
"Moody, either in the general nature of time, or specifically to thank for the two
books which I sent him a month ago. I find it irritating, even if characteristic
of his taciturnity. I shall badger him with a sharp note rather than with additional
blessings for the season. No one else has heard, either, I gather, unless it be

CHURCHILL HOTEL

CHURCHILL, MAN.

FULLY LICENSED

RESTAURANT AND
DINING ROOM

AGENTS FOR
C.P. AIRLINES LTD.

Horst, who has also been silent since I sent her the two books and a letter. But somehow I take her silence more in professional stride. Grunow's letter and Norton's I enclose, more for their sentiment than for any information. But is not Norton's courage extraordinary? It was enough to whiten my cheeks when he told me he had had two coronaries and a hernia!

One letter I have had, the consequences of which I shall be anxious to share with you when you come over this winter, as I think you must, if only for a week. This was from Brother Volant, or Brother Valeur (as I am sometimes, to my own shame, tempted to call him). He writes that he has shipped off to me a little figure carved from green stone of a man carrying a seal, which he thinks I will like, and for which I am to pay $35.00. However, at the same time he is giving me six little antique Iglulik archaeological specimens which the Oblates have brought in in a new trove, and these are the little duck-like figures: 4 sea monsters, and one loon ("among the monster there are male and femelle this last have the hair do"). I blush but am happy, and we must divide them between us.

I succumbed to temptation in another direction, when I was in New York trying to find a combined Christmas and birthday present for Susan, and when I stumbled on an antiquariat that sold eskimo artifacts. They were from the St. Elizabeth Islands, off Alaska, and had been bought from a museum which apparently didn't want them. Or rather it, for except for a little fragment of an ivory harpoon, I bought only a curious object of the most exquisitely mallowed ivory, probably a scraper, carved with deep lines almost like a turtle's shell. But what a beauty it is! They have also an elaborately carved seal club (like my uncarved one) in the shape of some sea monster, and a beautiful snow knife of ivory, and perhaps some day I will pick those up. Several netzkes, or things like them, which were enchanting are also there. I must show you the shop.

And I am reading a little again about the North, as a change in pace and attention, and to set my mind straight again.

Can you sense what I oweryou, and how deep is the love I send you for Christmas?

bliss

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 December 1957

Dearest Fido,

Just an additional note to my Churchill letter, to say
that the copy of GATE arrived on the day after your letter of the
13th came here--which is to say it only reached New Haven on the 18th,
Christmas mails being, one presumes, what they are. And on the 20th
came the Artemis from London which I take to be the first installment
of the rewritten sections. I had not known that GATE had actually been
sent out, and so had not worried about it; and you will understand why
I have not been able to sit down immediately to reread it, my Christmas
cards having been delayed and now needing to be sent. Tomorrow I have
to drive to Gardner to take my Christmas presents to my mother (whose
voice sounded much stronger over the phone, but who is still confined
to the second floor), but tomorrow night I promise myself my first
rereading, and the second one to come on Christmas Day when it will be
a gift suitable to the feast.

I shall still be anxious to hear the final diagnosis of
Esie's condition, and it is simply awful for her to have to go through
this. Awful, too, for you who have had to bear so many burdens during
this past year.

As to Hilda, I should not pressure her into going to Lugano
if she doesn't want to; and there is a good case for her staying where
she knows her way around the room, the distances between things etc. One
must admit that the hill at Lugano would be an immense consideration. But
this is no reason why you should not go, and take George with you. Hilda
may fuss, but you must simply let her fuss. With everyone grabbing for
your undivided affection you will become like the body of Osiris, torn
asunder by his devotees. But if they do, remember that I shall come in
their wake and reassemble the bits of my beloved. Then we will woof together
under the Greenland banks.

I will try to discover the name of the consul-general in Zurich,
and when my secretary comes back at the end of the month I will write a most
formal letter to him of explication, with a copy to you. I really think it
might help, especially with the official Yale stationery. At any rate it
can do no harm. I know what angle I shall take.

All Christmas love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

24 December 1957

Dearest Fide:

I drove yesterday to Gardner to take presents to the three families and have a visit with my mother. I found her spirits good, but her body very weak indeed. She had a dress on for the first time since her stroke (her "fall" as she calls it) at Thanksgiving, but spends most of the time on her bedroom couch, lying in the sun. She goes into her little sewing room for lunch, and then spends a couple of hours at her desk before going back to the couch again. So far she has not been down stairs, but hopes to on Christmas Day. But she talks with considerable confidence of what greeting cards she will use next Christmas, she was less forgetful than sometimes, and we had a really wonderful visit together. I fear, though, that some time she will have a second stroke, and this time it will be the last. Now fortunate she is, however, to keep her interest in life.

I am glad at least that Elsie's operation is over, and that it was operable. Brain surgeons seem to know their business, and if hers says she will recover then I am certain she will. The main thing is that something could be done, that something could be removed which was cause as well as effect. How especially grateful I am that she could be in Zurich so that at least she will continue to have Eric to keep an eye on her, and have good care, without tying you down. I think you *must* have a period at Lugano, and who could be better than George as a mealtime companion. Don't cut the stay too short.

What an extraordinary state of affairs this matter of the personal financial papers is; I simply cannot understand it, but am glad you got your own things into safe keeping. It may well be that even if you do not actually sell Kenwin, it would be better to have an auxiliary apartment for winter. Then, as you say, you could be more easily mobile.

DeBrunner's report on Hilda is satisfying, and you are very smart to have gotten Joan an Olivetti. Exactly the right thing; it will be her own, and will permit her to turn to it without betraying the privacy of her free time. Congratulations!

I forgot to tell you in my last letter, that (not having heard from you to the contrary) I sent the Hodgsons a cheque for $1500 for Christmas. Her broken arm will have caused them a setback, but under the circumstances of their living I think the same (increased) amount we sent last year will be sufficient. I am confident that she will let me know if any straits appear. I feel pretty sure that I have her confidence.

I am interested in what you say about Melitta's dominance of Heydt. There is certainly nothing to deny that she wants to do that; and of course there is every temptation for Heydt to accept it, since she will do much to help him meet the p.a. circle, get patients, an internship etc.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

However, my suspicion is that Heydt likes to be led, perhaps even needs it.

Hilda will have told you that I sold the first ten of her Owl series to the Evergreen Review; I had thought these were to be all. "Now she has sent over two additional groups of four each, but I think I shall let the ten stand so far as that appearance is concerned. Actually, although it will take some rereadings to know, I suspect that the original group is stronger by itself (with the exception of one very moving love poem to Heydt). Now she has gone over into the verbal allusiveness of the citation of names Ra-Rajah-Ramona (if you know what I mean); Egypt is there again, and Greece, and one has lost the effective persona with which she began. But say nothing of this to her, naturally. Part of this last may be a way of wooing Heydt from Melitta.

Two envelopes of letters came today, and I was much amused by Edith's new suit. One cannot help but grin a little at the comparison of her to Marie Corelli; but it is of course both mean and meaningless. Marya speaks of little plots which Horace and I are making to get prizes for Hilda's book of poems, but I don't know what she means. Most prizes (all prizes, I know) are restricted to American citizens. I myself have tried to get an honorary prize given, but have little hope of its working out, and they would not know of this. I keep trying to get her made an honorary member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, but get nowhere with this either through Marianne or anyone else. Horace and Marya are unfortunately given the cold shoulder by the group. I do get discouraged about the reviews of Hilda's book. Despite my trying, there has been only the review in the Tribune which came through the copy I sent Babette Deutsch; although Poetry will review it in January. Otherwise there is only silence, except in private letters to me. But I gather the book is in a second printing, and I do feel sure that it will continue to sell and that Grove Press believes in her.

Much to my surprise I had a paperback book in the mail, on Bobby McA. I shall get a couple of extra copies, and send one to Hilda. Would you like one for your private glance, and you can send it back if you don't want to keep it. It is not of the sensational type, and one should, I think, be aware of what has been said.

I am still at work on my desk. Must write a paper for the American Historical Association meeting in New York on Sunday. I had expected to spend last week on it, but there were (as you know) interruptions, and my heart is not really in it.

We put up the Christmas tree in the living room this morning, before I came down; and the girls as always will decorate it this evening. I do hope all goes well.

Susan joins in love, and in sympathy for all you have been going through.

All my love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 December 1957

Dearest Fido,

Have spent today at what I have been waiting for: the chance to sit down quietly and alone with THE GATE. It is superb! I haven't tried to compare it with the earlier versions, but I do know that I am completely satisfied with what you have done. Fortunately you are one of those rare persons who does not take the life out of a story by rewriting it, or I should never have suggested that you do so. But you are also, fortunately, one of those rare persons who goes beyond the suggestion so that in the end I no longer remember what it was that I suggested, or how you have managed to achieve it.

There were a few obvious typographical errors which I have corrected without bothering to query you, and in one spot I added a "himself" to "he" to avoid a confusion of reference. So it will go off to Helen, with whom I have spoken over the phone, and she can begin planning. I call this "her" book at Pantheon, whereas "Artemis" is Kurt's.

The Christmas period was pleasant, all things considered. Christmas Eve and the night before that were a little rugged; but the day itself went without incident. Our chief difficulty is having to hold our breaths too long.

Your wire came in good time, as I hope ours did to you; Susan had her little day-t-day book under the tree from you, as I did with my sweet little carved figures of ivory. It is interesting, as you say, to see the greater skill the Grublæder apparently have. The set of postcards from Copenhagen were in today's mail, and I was overcome with envy at your having seen the things themselves, though deeply grateful for the chance to see them in facsimile. Your eskimo card from Copenhagen came in yesterday's mail, and is my favorite of all that came this year. It is absolutely charming, and (though it is odd to say of the Arctic) "pastoral."

My time having been interrupted a good deal so far in the holidays, I have been desperately trying to scheme up something to say at the national convention of the American Historical Association meeting in New York on Sunday, where I am supposed to comment on two papers on Individualism in American History. Alas, one miscreant participant has not sent me his paper, though it was due in October, and this rather leaves me in a spot. Sunday is Susan's birthday, and I especially wish this year that I didn't have to be away; but we are having a family dinner party at Mrs Bennett's and then will go to the theatre en masse: Mrs B. Liz, Sue and Jim, and Susan and myself. (Mrs Bennett, by the way, was deeply pleased with your calendar, as was my mother.

A happy and happier new year to you and Hilda, with all our and
my love.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

28 December 1957

Dearest Fido,

I take a minute off with you -- the dog team stops for
rest -- in the midst of trying to put something (just something!)
together in my mind to say tomorrow at the meeting in New York. Well,
perhaps I am a little too harsh on myself. I do have a few notes, and
what I hope will be a scheme within which I can talk for the fifteen
minutes which is all I have. And even though you will not know that
your are praying for me, I shall think of you as doing so by sheer
force of empathy.

Guides to the National Museum arrived in this morning's post, and I have leafed through it with delight. They do have an obviously superb collection; and their amerindian objects appear to be as good as their eskimo. I am especially struck by the "ast Greenland objects shown opposite p. 58. I shall study it with great interest.

Also in the mail was an announcement that the package from
Brother Volant was here, if I would pay the eleven dollars and more of
duty -- really rather steep, all in all, since the total bill was only
$35. So I hastened to fetch it and unpack it. Closest to my heart, of
course, are the five little Ugulik ivories, richly brown in patina.
There are three of what he called the sea monsters, one of which has a
fine design etched into it, while the others are more worn. Then there
are two loons, with long reaching-out necks; or rather, one that is
perfect, and another that has half the neck broken. And he included also
a spectacularly thin little carved needle of ivory, also an antiquity like
the others. I should never have believed, when we stood in the museum at
Churchill, that I would ever actually own examples; and how glad I am that
you kept us returning to the museum for more cards and more purchases and
more talk. The other two items are less charitable but nice. One is a
walrus with two little ivory tusks, carved out of green soapstone, about
four inches long and two high, with a good formalized design on it. The
second is a large soapstone figure of the kind we bought at the Hudson's
Bay Company warehouse, rather massive, of an eskimo straining to hold a
seal bottomside up. Both of these are modern, and the latter can take the
place of the broken one I had intended for Susan from our last trip.

Need I say that all these things remind me of you?

All love,

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

3 February 1958

Dearest Fido,

It is always pleasantly homely to think of you as at
Lowndes again, remembering the Sunday evening dinners during the war.
But you fit so comfortably into so many memories that my mind's eye
can switch to the brown cookpot at Chesterfield without any real
myopia. I still regret not having been with you in Scilly; that remains a lacuna.

We begin to catch our breaths, though nibbled at by the
fear that Lizzie will have a change of heart about the Institute after
the novelty has worn off and the challenging of her position (the equivalents of the tests she has always run from) begins. Little Susan saw
her again on Saturday afternoon, and reported her as saying of herself
that she was the most popular person on the floor, etc.--but then one
ought not to expect much change in so short a period. One only fears
the let-down when it comes. Meanwhile I had my first session (a couple
of hours) on Friday with the assistant to the analyst, while Susan had
seen her similarly but for longer on the previous week. Alternating, one
of us goes each week -- a practise I very much approve of, as it gives
some sort of check on what she is saying, and of course educates us
both for ourselves and for the future.

I was sorry about Oonagh's loss of her baby. With the very
young, when they are not peasants, this frequently happens. But it is
discouraging.

You spoke of George's early Craig etchings and letters, and
these will be pleasant to help memorialize George with eventually, but as
you say we must let him speak first. I am not quite sure however whether
we ought to try to buy them from him, since it is his way of doing something
for you and for Hilda. One can watch his fiances, and if something goes
radically wrong with his health one would have to step in with more anyhow.
For that reason I hesitate about robbing him of his gesture. But we can
wait for this; he does not have your problem of space.

Kurt writes that the complete statement about the Gandharan
book will not be possible before the end of February. He estimates, roughly,
29000, exclusive of the 30 percent for general overheads and services. We
have of course paid a substantial share of this already, but I have not
stopped at the moment to figure up how much. I have the accounting of
course. I am glad it is good; it has to be!

As to Greenland, my young Dane writes me that his wife "has
phoned the Royal Danish Greenland Society for Commerce. She was told that
definite sailing schedules would not be available till the end of March,
at which time they will inform you (i.e., me) directly as to line and
dates of sailing. I will see to it that you get all the necessary informa-

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

9 February 1958

Dearest Fido,

I hear, vaguely, over the radio that there are snows in England, and only hope that you can quit London for the Scillies without having to linger too long in snowdrifts. I only hope I (or they) exaggerate. Here the temperature has not risen about 20° all day, and the wind has blown much as it used to at Chesterfield. Somehow the excitement of being there made it more tolerable than in New Haven. Mrs Bennett leaves for Florida tomorrow, but alas she can only hope, for it has been in the thirties there and the oranges have frozen.

Not much to report from this end, except that one keeps busy. Yesterday was consumed by a niece's wedding; she was married to a submarine officer whom everyone approves of, and three of his fellow officers on the submarine spent Friday and Saturday nights with us at the house. It was all very gay -- crossed swords at the exit from the church for the couple to pass under (these were all Annapolis men), and a sprinkling of uniforms at the reception.

The chief items seem to be business. Kurt's letter about the Sandharan figures has arrived, and one is a good deal overwhelmed by the total costs (especially when this does not include Ingholt's fee and trip to Pakistan, and Islay's two, or the various small fees otherwise and previously paid by me. The total cost as from Pantheon (including the 30% charged by Pantheon) comes to $36,576.52. Towards this we have already paid $18,701.84, making the sum now owed them to be $17,874.68. The sum now remaining in the saving's account is $9,941.97. The needed difference for me to settle up with Pantheon is $7,932.71, which would close out the account unless you wanted to put in extra to keep it going.

Under the present arrangement, the publication of GATE will cost us nothing, but we do have to pay storage fees on the unsold copies of the other novels (they can ring in quite a series of occasional costs), and some items of that sort. However there are no other immediate charges likely to be met with in terms of people, unless of course Hodgson should suddenly require hospitalization or treatment of that sort.

The one possibility, and I cannot be sure of this, arises in connection with Hilda's *Selected Poems* and a situation which completely bewilders me. Because I give away copies of the paperback edition from time to time, where I think they will do good for the long-term life of the volume, I last week ordered another dozen copies to be sent. The answer came back that this would be the last lot that they were likely to be able to send, although they still had some hardcover copies. I wrote back to ask if this could possibly mean that they were letting go out of print a book of selected poems which had sold out between September and January (I should have thought they would have cheered at this), especially

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

since reviews like those in *Poetry*, and mouth-to-mouth praise were adding momentum? Also that the continued sale of the volume would help the eventual reception of the *Helen* sequence; and what did this mean about that? The answer was vague, referred to the "very expensive reprinting" (but surely they had plates, or could reprint from photo-offset), and that they were still interested in doing the *Helen*. At this point I wrote on Friday to Horace, sending copies of the correspondence, and asking what he knew, especially since he had told me that Grove had or was doing a second printing. He called by phone last night to say he would talk to Grove on Monday, and agreed with me that *a Selected Poems* was a long-term venture and it was important to keep in print, that he had a long article on Hilda coming out in *Commonweal* (the influential Catholic literary review), etc. He also agreed with me that there would be much to be said for keeping it in print even at the expense of the Helen volume, and I mentioned the possibility (if expense was really the factor) of making some kind of arrangement with Grove. For I think Hilda (althe pleased by the number of sales in so short a time) would be bewildered and hurt by the fact that copies couldn't be bought of it. I certainly would, for the book is a key to the long range rehabilitation of her reputation in this country, important also if she were to come back to this side. However of course, the sum owed on the "andharan book is rather a blow to you at this critical time of your financial manipulations, and you may wisely feel that nothing should be done except to let it go out of print (which of course we may be forced to do anyhow). In that case it would be awkward and unwise to try to get another publisher to take it over, although I should be most angry about the matter of future permission fees to Grove for selections included in the book. I would have to see my New York lawyer about this.

Well I suppose we can only wait and see, and I am deeply grateful to Horace for his promptness and energy in the matter. I will let you know what he says.

Susan joins in affectionate greetings to Doris, and in love to
yourself.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

15 February 1958

Dearest Fido,

Are you, will you be, where I address this? I hope so, but they will forward anyhow, or it will be waiting for you. It has been too busy a week, a Norwegian professor of American literature and American studies arrived on Monday and leaves tomorrow. Monday night there was a meeting of the American Studies Club at which he spoke, and I had to take him to dinner beforehand; Tuesday there was the Boston Symphony and Susan's sister from out of town; Wednesday afternoon the Norwegian gave a formal lecture (which I had to introduce) and then we had to entertain him and guests for dinner afterwards; Thursday night I took him and the professor of American literature from Basel to the Fellows' dinner at Jonathan Edwards, and by last night (when we should have gone to a dance) we (Susan and I) were both so tired that we simply stayed at home.

But the real news of the week of course is the arrival of a grandson on Tuesday, six pound and twelve ounces, named for Jim's favorite widower uncle who was his best man at the wedding. Both Susan and little Susan are wonderfully content with it, and Susan even bought a Valentine card "To my grandson" to send to him on Friday. I had my first glimpse of it this afternoon at the hospital. Under the present scheme the mother's have the baby in the room with them during the day, rather than the unnatural habit of isolating parent and child until the mother goes home, and both Susans, properly wrapped in white gowns, hold it in their laps and marvel. Not wanting to scrub and bedeck myself I passed up the opportunity until after tomorrow when the path leads home.

I am delighted that got to the Scillies, and out-of-season would be, I should think, even more attractive than when the trippers are there. You escaped too, I gather, some of the cold and snow which seems to have hit England. (Here it has been seldom above twenty, and enjoyed only by the youngsters like those whose picture I enclose as a memory-tickler of Chesterfield.)

As to Doris' sundial, I have written her and asked for a photograph so that I can know not only whether it is a pocket sundial such as Thompson often made, or a garden one as at Kew Palace. With the photograph I can make enquiries and have some idea of what she would be likely to get for it on this side. Doris's letters, by the way, seem to be reasonably adjusted, and I shall be interested in more details once you have, if ever you have, a moment of leisure.

Agree with you about the London Library.

I had a letter from the assistant at Grove asking about offers to help with the reprint. I enclose my answer, but of course would do nothing without further consultation with them, as well as with my New York literary lawyer. I do think the whole matter is rather shocking.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

I noticed, in case you are interested for yourself--Yale will certainly
have a copy-- a pamphlet by Otto Basler, on Der Spate Hermann Hesse, published
at Olten in 1957.

Three additional envelopes of letters have arrived (in addition to the
package with mine in it) and I was much interested in Pat Gregory's. He has
obviously, at the moment anyhow, dedicated himself to a literary career, and
there is certainly a "literary" character to his letter. But his personality
comes through somehow, and it will be interesting to see what he comes out
with. My own hunch, however, is that you would find his manner a little
exhausting just at this moment, and I should put off a visit from him.

The various clippins you have sent of the eskimo exhibition in London
have been most interesting. I judge the British are both confused and
intrigued by it. Some day I really would like to get at the history behind
the modern carvings, exactly who began it, and on what basis they chose the
models for what has become a pretty well fixed style. It does not seem to
accord very exactly (although not out of tune) with archaeological specimens.
In mid week I received from Brother Volant what is a real treasure, an almost
complete run of the Oblate magazine, filled with invaluable historical data
on the founding of their missions, the early history (post-Oblate, that is)
of Chesterfield, Pelly Bay, Iglulik, etc. In fifty years this will be
invaluable, yet I doubt that a single library in the country has a set, unless
it be one of the Catholic colleges. My little talk on archaeology and our
trip comes on the evening of the 28th, and I am reasonably well set for it.
Have had some of the Thule things from Volant photographed to amplify the
pictures we took of house rings etc., and have had slides made of a number
of diagrams etc from the Thule volumes. (I do thank you for the batch of
Rasmussen reports which have arrived from Maggs, as well as for the bundle
of children's books.) Forced to give them a title for the talk, I devised
what I hope you will approve of as appropriately modest: "Left Hand toward
Archaeology: an Inch of the Arctic." How I wish you could be here.

I had a fine letter from Horst, with several photographs of herself
and husband and children. Shall I send on, or will you wait for your next flip
to this side?

All love, as always

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

26 February 1958

Dearest Fido,

What days! I hardly remember when I wrote you last, and
if I repeat myself, then (very well) I repeat myself. But it is only
a matter of administrative details at this season of the year, the
piling up of interviews and committee meetings, and the like. Other-
wise all seems to go much as always, and the new grandson makes a cheerful
echo even when his mother things he fusses. Actually he is a very good
little baby, sleeps long between his feedings, and looks about him as
though he were truly interested in the new world he is discovering.

The check from Switzerland arrived, and has been deposited
in my checking account; I shall be able to get to the bank at the end
of the week and transfer enough from the savings account to pay Pantheon's
bill. A six month's statement from May to October of last year has come
in from them, with an accounting of sales. Alas, it makes very sad
reading. 5 copies of Milda's *Freud* were sold; 56 copies of *October*; 66
of *Player's Boy* (actually I think this must have stepped up a little);
131 of *Roman Wall* (still the most popular); and (which is why I weep)
returned copies of *Beowulf* exceeded sales by 103 copies. However, the
important thing is that the books are in print and that people do continue
to want them; it is a loyal audience.

A letter from Islay, says "One begins to dream of a 'Gandharan
Art in India', though clearly in the light of the Gandharan Account in
Pantheon, one should look in fresh directions for a sponsor. I wonder
whether you think there is the remotest hope of being able to coax one of the
American Foundations into cooperation, on the strength of the present book.
Photographically, I could do much better now than three or four years ago,
and for the art itself, my eye is more practised and the bibliography absorbed
is creditable. If there is something to be done through American sources,
good for "andhara and good for me, but certainly this idea should not be
mooted to Bryher." I do "moot" it however, just to warn you that I am warning
him that in any event one would have to wait for several years to see whether
the present volume stirred up serious interest, and even then it is not very
likely that a foundation could be found, or an editor who could do work of
a similar calibre to that of Ingholt. (I needn't add that I personally would
go crazy were I to repeat the amount of labor I put into this one, without a
real rest between times.) What is more to the point, I think that little would
be added for a decade to the impetus the present book has given it; and that
if Islay is to do another book he would do better to go off on another field,
possibly the Utruscan. Even so, one cannot repeat so expensive a project, or
one on this scale, so soon, and I would be sorry to have *slay lose his heart
over it. So, to repeat, I do "moot" it to you, knowing you will not give me
away to him, and lest you should out of the kindness of your heart encourage
him toward what is certain to prove a dead end.

2

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

Somewhat more encouraging is the fact that the Grove Press is going to reprint Hilda's *Selected Poems*, so we do not need to worry about that particular financial contingency. I am much relieved. I wrote a long letter to Rosset, and Horace saw him again, and the deed was done. I am only glad that I caught wind of it before the death became a *fait accompli*.

I am interested in what you say about Helen and Kurt, for --to my amazement I had a letter last week from an editor at Pantheon saying that they were in Europe, and asked if I could go down to see him about queries about *Gate*. I cannot go until next week, but will try to do so then. What astonished me is that I had had no prior word of this from either of them, although Kurt had written me once or twice about other matters. Helen, on the other hand, had never acknowledged the receipt of the ms of *Gate* --quite uncharacteristically -- so that I had to phone her eventually to make sure, and she seemed most harassed on the phone. Always before they have been most meticulous about keeping me informed as to where they were. I had wondered if this had something to do with Kurt's illness at Christmas time, about which she wrote you, --or, and this seems to me likely, that the business matters were cropping up again. (You mention Bollingen: just for the record, it will be interesting to speculate that perhaps the Bollingen would do its own publishing, using the cheaper production costs of Switzerland, (in terms of calibrations etc., and that Helen and Kurt would withdraw from Pantheon to do this. Schabert *must* be impossible! And I weep for them.)

Am having a little Arctic flurry, especially in trying to get together my material and choosing my slides for my talk on Friday night--no easy job with all my days filled, and Tuesday and Thursday evenings taken up by other unsought-for engagements. Brother Vollant remains amiable, and has sent down (to be bought) another soapstone carving, this time of a woman sewing, plus two ring and dart games (modern, but like the old ones) and an entrancing loon to whom you will lose your heart when you see it. It has agreed to try to fill out a collection as time goes by, and it seems like a unique opportunity.

I had another letter from Bill Norton, as I think I told you, asking me to write Moody and find out the plans for the summer; so I wrote Joe again, rather firmly, and had a reply in this afternoon's mail. I enclose a copy. So that is that! Well, we had our adventure anyhow, and like yourself I never did expect that anything further would materialize. I feel a little sad for his sake, however.

To return to publishing matters again--I reach in every direction on my desk--for things I intended to discuss with you -- I have delayed in sending you a contract for *Gate*, which I must have before I can legally sign a contract with the Wolves on their return. Could you get it witnessed and return to me? Also, because it seemed to me simplest to handle your things as the lawyer advised me to do with Hilda's, I am enclosing a contract

3

for your other copyrights not specifically covered in our previous
contracts. In Hilda's case I had it done so that Heydt could witness
the contract at her room, and then go to the consul for it to be
sworn to by him. In your case the two witnesses should be sufficient.
I told Hilda to discuss the matter of hers with you, if she wished to,
and perhaps she will. The purpose is to take care of overlaps between
versions of poems etc as they may variously have appeared. The two checks
for a dollar each will hardly make you rich, but must be cashed anyhow.
You keep one copy of the contract, and return the other to me.

I have been much relieved to learn that Edith is better, and am
wholly in favor of your plans for her. No need to comment on them in
detail.

As for Joan, I agree too that her father could well profit by
a briefing as to the facts of her case. I very much approve these series
of conferences between the Yale Institute and Susan and myself (spparately),
since each of us is a focus of the problem (among many) and yet are the
ones who are ultimately responsible. I hope Heydt agrees. Or it might be
worth flying Heydt over to see them both. This conceivably could be less
complicated than to have either come to Zurich where Joan is.

The little secret about Edith's award I shall not, of course, breathe;
but I am delighted at the news. And I have in fact wondered if, in order
to make some sort of balance of lady peering, now that they have been
approved, she might not turn out to get one of the first group ** say,
one woman scientist, one politician, one literary figure. It is certainly
conceivable, and what a heavenly thing it would be for her! I do like
reasonably happy endings! It is a pity that David is not the sort of person
one can take in one's stride; possibly she is right in saying that world
thinks it better if a woman is present, but I doubt that the world cares
very much. Who cares is Edith herself, who is at heart one of the loneliest
of humans.

You were obviously hugelu busy in London, and I am glad that you could
squeeze in time with Philip. As to the will, you know that I will take care
of Hilda in whatever way she needs it, as I shall do for any of your (our)
friends. We will of course discuss all this when we see each next, but you
know from before how I feel on every account both of opportunity, gratitude
and responsibility.

Finally, as to Hilda herself, I can only think that the likeliest is
that she will remain for the time being at Brunner's, and she seems to find
the new regime appealing and her own status amusing and pleasant. Alas, I am
not surprised about the news of her hip; this is what was reported to me here
as almost certain to happen. What we can be grateful for is that she manages
to get around as much as she does, and that summer will not be to far off.

I do hope that Kenwin will not be too appalling on your return. Do
clean as you think best; you will not settle into writing until you do.

All love, dearest Fido,

NORMAN

COPY

J. P. Moody

Elliot Lake, Ontario

21 Feb. 1958.

Dear Norman;

Please accept my sincere apologies for not having written sooner.
I cannot explain all the details in this short letter but I will keep
in touch with all of you regularly and will send a more detailed let-
ter shortly.

I will not proceed to fill in the major gaps at this time. The
"Snowfari" did not get to the Arctic--no fault of the ship but by
the time I got a good Captain it was too late. There were of course
some minor mechanical problems but with a good man they could have
been worked out.

At this time I am now fighting a losing game to keep the ship. As
yet I don't know the outcome but I may have to let it go. There is
not a great deal of money against the ship but it is just too hard
to meet all the debts at this time. However as it represents twelve
years hard work and the height of all my dreams I am doing my best to
save it. Enough of this--I will however keep you advised on this
matter, I certainly appreciate what you all did and I will immediately
advise the others at once of the situation. It is likely that we will
not be able to operate this year--can't say for sure but will try and
save the ship for another year. Thanks to you for all your help and
kindness and I will write you in detail next week when I expect that
I will have more to say.

Would you please write Mrs. Bryher and advise her. I will write her
soon. Would you pass me the present address of Mrs. Bryher.

Write again shortly and you will hear from me soonest again.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

1 March 1958

Dearest Edo,

You will be delighted, I trust, to see that I am beginning
the new month with new letter sheets. But not wholly, of course, for
my supply of old envelopes still lasts, and my Puritan conscience de-
mands that I use these up before making my correspondence out of one
cloth. This marks, nevertheless, a half a step forward.

I'm not really sure that the letter has any other signifi-
cance, for almost nothing has happened to break the monotony of committee
meetings, lectures, seminars, and a round of academic chores. Nothing,
that is, except for last night's lecture, a little announcement of which
I enclose for your amusement and tolerance. On the whole it went off
reasonably well, since I certainly made no pretensions of even an amateur's
knowledge; but there were at least two professors of archaeology and
anthropology present who had the kindness to say I had made no mistakes.
Susan made me cut down and cut down and cut down on my natural enthusiasm
for slides, saying quite correctly that I must not have more than fifty;
and since she ran the slide projector she kept me moving along. I had had
a number of slides made of the little artifacts I acquired thru Brother
Volant, as well as pictures of extant houses on Southampton to correspond
with the house rings we saw, and a few of tents to go with the tent rings,
and of fish weirs to go with the slide of you examining the leicester.
Actually I had my second package from Volant this week, with an attractive
soapstone carving of a woman sewing (from Lyons Inlet), two ball and pin
games from an unknown source (modern), and an exquisite carved bird, made
of serpentine. Volant called it a loon, but I think now it is of the
sort of black duck that we saw flying over the ice pack.

Now I must buckle down to the preparation of my lecture on
*The Marble Faun* to give at Howard University, in Washington, at the end
of the month. It's an odd choice of topic for a Negro university, but it
will let me get at the Italian journals, which perhaps I can finish up
by the end of the summer (along with a good deal else, I hope.)

No letter from you for several days now, but perhaps Monday's
post will satisfy my sweet tooth.

All love as always,

2

not yet written Islay about his suggestion, but will follow your line.
I sometimes think it would be rather fun to have a book eventually on
Askimo Art, or on Greenland and the Viking relics, but I fancy this is
too cold a task, not for Islay but for Kenneth

The Cornish book arrived yesterday, and Susan grabbed it to read
on the train today, coming back from Washington. I will get my chance
afterwards. As to the diving book on Scilly, I suspect it would not mean
as much to me, at least until I have been lucky enough to go there, as some
day I shall.

Will still try to get the letter of introduction to Dinesen for you
in good time.

Now as to the several items, I seem somehow to have forgotten in the
past few letters:

Iskender is still with the anthologist in London, who asked for it,
likes it, and wants to include it in his book. But he had been a member of
the firm that was to publish it, has severed his relationship with the firm
and wants to connect with another and bring it out with them, and asked me
for permission to hold it for the time being. I had to say yes.

August Day had been sent off before your letter about it came to me,
to Evergreen Review published by Wove, which has taken the group of Hilda's
poems. I have not heard from them yet; the length of course may be too big
for their use. By the way, you will be pleased that Hilda's Poems were
included in the few considered for the National Book Award, and I was pleased
at this, even though it slipped in by mistake and could not really be considered
because of citizenship.

I have ordered two copies of each of your books sent to you at Kenwin.
Allow a month, and if they haven't arrived tell me. It's better that I order,
I think, because I can keep nudging, and especially because the bills are
charged against my account.

Somewhere, or sometime, you spoke of Horst as for the Greenland trip.
I really think not. As for the time on the boat, etc., since we will really
not be camping this time, I think you and I can get along all right together.
As for Moody, I wouldn't dream of helping him out of his difficulty; he would
only be back in hot water again ten minutes afterwards. He is no manager, and
the luck of our last summer's trip was due more to ourselves than to him.

All love, as always

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

16 March 1958

Dearest Fido,

A quick, Sunday-morning-at-the-office note, since my workday will be cut short by my having to go with Susan to Hartford so that she can officially be present at the opening of the Flower Show there. Actually I always enjoy seeing the Connecticut Show, so I don't mind. But I begin to fear this coming Friday, when I have to give the Burch Memorial Lecture at Howard University, in Washington. Alas, I haven't been able to begin it. However classes stop for the spring holidays on Tuesday night, so I should have at least two undivided days to give to it. I do hope it won't be too awful, for Howard is one of the two chief Negro colleges, and this is their big affair of the year. Topic: "Place in the Art of Fiction."

However, the fact that the first few days of the "vacation" will be taken up this way, and that the holidays are over on March 31st (before which I hope to finish two promised articles on Hawthorne), will be enough to show why, although I weep, I cannot flip over during the time you mention. And just to make it more impossible, I still haven't found the time to get new photographs for a new passport. But that I had planned to do in April. Naturally I shall miss seeing you and Hilda, but this time there will be the added loss of being able to see Sylvia.

Glad you are working on *Artemis*, which I am most anxious to see as a whole and before we are together in one place or another. My own instinct, offhand, would be to carry vol II up to the end of the war as making a kind of climax of experience. To knock off just as the bell tolls the outbreak would be to leave an unresolved chord. However, these endings work out naturally and depend on the theme developed.

I have had a reply from my friend who said he knew the Baroness Blixen, and gather he had never met her personally although he was her American editor. He will get her address from Random House, and I will write her, using his name. A little roundabout, but I don't see why not; and it would be rather fun for you to see her and get her inside slant on things. This is of course presuming that you can find the time to get to Denmark. But don't worry if you can't, or the time schedules for the boat etc do not work out conveniently for you this summer. I still have to do much research on Greenland, and ought to pick up a little Danish (which I won't have time to do this year) before going ashore; and with your book to finish, Elsie's condition, and the chance of bringing Hilda over, it may seem best to postpone the voyage for the moment. I could hop over to you in June perhaps, for a fortnight, and then settle in to tidy up the last of the French and Italian journals, so that my promotion will come presumably next year. I won't be able to, if I do Greenland.

I ran into Schabert (the villain in the *Wolves* den) and heard for the first time that they were back. Not a peep out of them directly. He said Kurt had some kind of stomach upset or ailment, but I did not want to discuss, in view of the situation.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN • CONN.

18 March 1958

Dearest Fido,

The enclosed note came from Mrs Odle, and I pass it along to you in case you feel anything should be done. I leave this completely to you.

I am much happier at the news of Philp's success, in your letter of the 14th. Like George, I shall be spinning my wheel to heap abominations on Wormser if he objects.

Lethbridge? Both Susan and I were delighted with his comments on Glynn. But track Glynn down? My darling! Only a few weeks ago I sent you the clipping from the newspaper about him and his discovery, telling you to pass it on to Lethbridge, and there is nothing new to report since then. I saw Glynn, who is now president of the Connecticut Archaeological Society, when I gave my talk on "An Inch of the Arctic," and we spoke of the Knight then. What we have been waiting for is your visit to the States, so that we can get in the car and go there. Perhaps eventually, when finances are in shape again, we can do a little book on the Knight, with an introduction by Lethbridge. It might be fun.

Yesterday afternoon and early evening were wiped off the calendar (alas, when I have still not begun my lecture for Friday night in Washington) by my having to go to the trustees meeting of the Mark Twain Memorial in Hartford. One of the members spent almost the entire two hours submitting revisions for the by-laws, as though protecting unknown persons from a cabal. I know all this sort of talk is necessary, but I find it exceptionally boring. However, I did manage to get in a little reading at night, by skipping supper with little Susan and her husband, his brother and mother. I expect now to do almost nothing but work on Friday night, and am skipping my weekly interview with the Institute about Lizzie in order to do so.

I shall go down on the sleeper Thursday night, and come back on Sunday. Friday morning I hope to talk with Henry Collins at the Smithsonian about the eskimos, and will take one or two little objects for him to identify. The rest of Friday goes to the Negros at Howard, and Saturday I shall lunch with Mrs Pound and then spend the afternoon with Ezra. I'm not sure how much I anticipate either, but it is necessary.

Incidentally, don't forget the contracts for GATE. I can't sign any contract with Panthon until I have yours in hand.

All love,

Norman

Another letter from Butter Holand, who has still new things, differently brought down by dogged chid. We are really having an "affair", but not conversation!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

24 March 1958

Dearest Fido,

Back this Monday morning, after my Washington trip, and now have
a week free of students in which to clear my desk, and, I hope, begin an article
or two. My secretary is away for the day, it being vacation time and the day
on which she entertains her bridge club for luncheon, so I feel amazingly inde-
pendent. What I should really write about, of course, is my trip, which was
great fun; but having wanted to commune with you, so to speak, by reading the
two yellow envelopes of letters, the contents are now strewn on my desk and need
picking up; so I shall mention them casually first, as well as the two letters
which awaited me.

As to George, I shall write him immediately, and am glad for the
tip from you. I had told him earlier that I would be most grateful for the
letters, but whenever he felt the right moment was. I had not wanted to seem
to push him, nor risk any confusion on his part between my primary relation as
a friend and the quite secondary one of being an historian.

Sylvia's letter interesting. I rather give up any hope of Yale's
being able to negotiate with her for the Joyce material, and am confirmed in
my earlier belief that her possession of things whose value can be reckoned in
money appeals to the side of her which wanted to run a shop and prove herself
"successful" (in terms of ultimate profit) to her American relatives. And of
course she has in fact been as successful as anyone could want to be in terms
of her career as a friend; so why should she not have both pleasures. I do
however suspect that what in another person might have been reckoned as her
purely literary side needed the sustaining force of Adrienne's artistic spirit,
and now that that has gone the earlier force reasserts itself. Curious too,
that Adrienne, in a manner that the French particularly have, was really both
purer in spirit and a better business woman than Sylvia. I was pleased to know
that her book was finished--this was the first word I had had of it.

Agnes takes to her typewriter as a nightingale takes to spring!

I do like Christian's letters; there can be no doubt but that the
academic life (and I do not speak sardonically) is the right one for him. He
has the intellectual curiosity, the slight aloofness, and the balance which will
make him happy even if he should not become a "name."

Bad luck for Margery about the ms of her book. One can't comment
without having read it, but I suspect that in her case as often in others, the
second book is more difficult than the first. One uses one's freshest material
in the first, and has a fresh audience; the form of the first is supplied by the
calendar of one's life and experience. To find equally interesting material
for the same audience, and a more "artful" structure is where the new difficulty
comes. So it may not be as easy for to rewrite as it would be, say, for a
professional like yourself.

Dorothy Richards and her continued mountain climbing still amazes me.

2

As for Doris, a separation may be more practical than a divorce (I should leave that to Philip), but I doubt it. Divorce is clean; the other is not, the thread is still there as a line of communication although it supports nothing. And to say that John has "scruples" about divorce, is as meaningful (or meaningless) as to say he has "scruples" about not drinking or about working, as though that were justification in itself for not working or keeping on drinking. His only hope for some sort of salvation is to have the thread cut

Now as for the two letters from you. Glad the papers have been signed for the trust breaking. Wormser is simply unscrupulous in his request for twenty thousand for accounting; it is like the overelaboration of his ac counts during the war, the fees for which appalled Philip then (for we had a long talk about it just before we broke with Wormser. Philip is shrewd enough, God knows, but he is a gentleman and knows what a code is.

Don't forget the Gate contracts; the Wolves howl for me to sign the contract with them, but I cannot do so until I have yours with me in my hands. I just take a day out this week and go down to run over their last suggestions for the text. They are good and are going ahead as though we had a contract, but if anything happens there will be the very devil to pay.

You ask about my mention of Williams twice, but not of Horace. The reasons were simply historical, in an article of this brevity. I should not think of omitting Horace in any discussion of 20th century American poetry, but Wms has been much more influential and a member of key historical groups or attitudes. Besides, the Encyclopedia has an entry for Wms, and in such a case it would be curious not to bring his name in.

I took the Baines book to Washington, but worked on my talk on the way down, and was so tired that I simply dozed on the trip back. Susan was delighted with it; it will be a solace to me during the evenings of this week.

Kirkaldy? We will see what sort of a response I get from her. I suggested it would be impossible to set a price without seeing the nature of the contents. There are good letters and bad ones from the point of view of value. I suggested to her in my letter that Maggs might appraise them, and gave Kenneth's name.

The Baroness Blixen's address has come and I shall write her this week, and should have heard before you go. Better, I think, than for you to write, for I can praise you as you would not do yourself.

As to Greenland, if you go then I go with you. I wouldn't dream of not sharing it with you. I wait with interest for details of time of sailing etc, which should be available shortly from my Danish student. I meant only that if it seemed better to you not to go this summer, then all would not be lost.

Perhaps we will send this off as is, so that it can get an earlier plane than the full letter would.

All love,
NORMAN

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

28 March 1958

Dearest Fido,

A hectic week, especially with yesterday taken out for my trip to Pantheon and the various items of business there. Kurt was not at the office, although Helen says his health is improving. Her references to how much better he felt while they were abroad led me somehow to think that he kept away a little bit from the office. But on the whole she seemed reasonably cheerful. The Wandharan book, by the way, has sold 470 copies so far; and since there have been no reviews, and what will come will come in the learned quarterlies, both Pantheon and I are reasonably happy about it.

We went over my jacket material, a copy of which I enclose and hope you will think is appropriate and at least passable. Do show to Milda for her approval. But the chief business, outside of some queries which their editor had about the text, consisted in the use of Islay's really superb photograph of the gate which we are using for the jacket. This seemed the obvious choice, because of the title and central symbol, but artistically the choice was more difficult because of the high level of quality of them all. So high indeed is it that Helen thought that if a group of these could appear credited to him, especially coming after the Wandharan book, and just at this moment, nothing could be more professionally a boost for him than this. So that they would be willing to include eight photographs in the book, printed in the best possible manner, and I myself am most enthusiastic about the possibility both on absolute terms, on the help it would give Islay, and because this seemed a very different matter from that of the drawings (illustrations of that type) to which you raised very sensible objections. At least I hope you will feel that the chance to do Islay such a service is too good to resist. I did not want to write him directly, however, unless you gave the g-ahead signal to me. Time growing short, I have included my letter to him with mine to yours, and if you are agreeable, would you send it along to him at once in order to save days. The extra cost of the publication of the photographs (for which Islay will receive the usual professional fees) will come out of the royalties on the book, but we will still not have to put up a penny to them. And since Pantheon is footing the bills, I should of course (in addition to helping Islay) like to please Helen too, and deal with them in the regular fashion of an author-publisher relationship. The result will be a beauty, I am sure, and the dedication of the book to Kenneth and Islay will make the inclusions seem all the more appropriate, without in any way setting a precedent.

This is still not the letter about Washington, but I must keep
my desk cleared.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

1 April 1958

Dearest Fido,

I had not thought to be so long in writing you anything save
on matters of business, but this preparation of a ten-year plan of needs
for American Studies has kept me at my typewriter (not to add words but to
eliminate them) and with pencil in hand while I calculate the mystery of
future salaries, new courses to be given, and the tactics of presenting them.
Fortunately my secretary is now mimeographing the awkward results, and there
is nothing more than to put on my sincere tie and present them tomorrow after-
noon to the Executive Committee of the University.

Your letter of the 27th has, as your letters always do, cheered
me however with the knowledge that things march reasonably at your end of
our invisible bond. Most of all I have been pleased with the news of your
progress with <u>Artemis</u> which obviously continues to take shape in a highly
satisfactory way. I am as eager as Kurt is, to see the results. The meeting
with Hilda seems a reasonable climax, and, alas, even in non-fiction one must
have climaxes.

The identity of the weaver? Of Margery and Wendy? I suppose I
confuse because somehow Margery seems the more characterful of the pair to
me; the book she could write, she probably never will: that is, about herself
and her marriage to Stephen Lewis. One's best material is always in one's self,
but the paper curtains which protect us are always so fragile and easily broken.

Wormser's foregoing of his accounting fees is almost the first
respectable gesture on his part in a month of moons; and I agree that Philip's
finger must have touched it off. However, you have saved this; and I am happy
for your sake.

Incidentally, the cheque for five thousand for the account arrived
this morning, and I shall deposit it so that it can earn interest as from the
first of this month. It is only 3½%, but my Yankee instincts are satisfied.

Susan has promised to write for her import permits, and will get
them off to Doris soon. It is too good a chance to miss, and our collection owes
its qualities to Doris. By the way, wouldn't George like to have a Susan Pearson?

I am somehow a little sorry that Kenneth has sold his flat, but I
daresay on the one hand that the advice was good, and on the other that both he
and Islay really exercise their talents by planning new residences. Will he take
away the imbedded Gandharan pieces and your beautiful leather wall coverings, or
will they go with the flat?

Now for a minute about Greenland. I have just heard from my Danish
student who has sent me the material I enclose, along with a letter a copy of
which I send in order to answer the original. It is better, I think, for you to
keep all the pertinent data at least until after your visit to Copenhagen. (By the
way, there is a long interview from the <u>Paris Review</u> with the Baroness Blixen,

thought. So I am sending you a copy of the Paris "review in which the interview first appeared, since I know you will be immediately curious. No hurry in returning it. Just sometime. I shall write Pantheon and ask them to send some of your books to the Baroness. What a good piece of luck this is! I shall tell her that you will be writing her when you know your schedule. Or write her before. As you prefer.

One final matter. As you will see from the enclosed, the contracts are
alas, no good because you forgot to date them, and any challenge might not
avail. I suppose you could add the dates, but if you think better to have a
new signature and seal, you could take the new copies into Zurich to the
American consul for them to witness. The latter of course is the best possible
contract.

What a package this is turning out to be. But what should weight it
even more is the love I send to you and to Milda and Sylvia for Easter, and
my greetings to Eric and to Joan and to Mme Herf.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

7 April 1958

Dearest Fido:

Oh my poor dear Fido! What a hell of a situation. I wish
+ could help, take something off your shoulder. It can't help but get
you down, even a husky as you are!

I put this off between students appointments for making out
their next year's schedules. It is a bore in a way, but it means a great
deal to them, and a few can be saved from real mistakes. At least one
hopes so. Anyhow I must answer, if only briefly, your last few letters.

Elsie: I am really worried, as is Susan. I am afraid I think
the only thing for the moment and perhaps longer is a situation somewhat
like Hilda's, except not at Kusnacht. That is not to be thought of. But
she needs care, both physical and psychiatric, and it is beyond your powers
to step in. Or one is forever lost. You will not be able to recover if
you take over, nor will she. I am not sure I agree about delaying with the
home. Certainly one can put it on the basis of her physical condition.
I am serious.

Hilda: Alas, I am worried about this, although of course in
a much different way. The difficulty seems, alas, pretty much what was
predicted by the orthopedist here. That is, that she could get along for
six months or more under the present conditions, but then the hip bone would
disintegrate, and the necessity of surgery become greater. The Swiss recommenda-
tion of no x-rays would have hidden what had happened. I do not think there
is much likelihood of ascribing the change to arthritis, or that exercises
should be taken. The problem is within the bone, and that is what makes
movement more difficult. If she would come with the idea of seeing Prutting
and possible help for her hip, then that would be the very best. BUT, if
she did, then I think neither you nor I ought to go to Greenland.

Otherwise I think we should go, as you suggest, and if it is
impossible to see the Viking ruins by normal transportation then we had
better give that particular goal up, and postpone until a later date when
we known Greenland ropes better. In any event you should certainly go to
Denmark and learn as much as possible. And see the Paronyss at the same
time.

You and Hilda are sweet to send the ties; I shall wear them with
pride and gratitude.

A note from Maggs says they are sending along another batch of
children's books. I ordered two from a British catalogue, but was told they
had been sold. I rather expect they will turn up as from Kenneth M's sharp
eye. Two Arctic books have turned up that might interest you, and I can send
if indicated. One is Freuchen's THE ARCTIC YEAR, a month by month account
of Flora and Fauna. I am not much on Freuchen, but this was really done (one
gathers) by a Finn Salomonsen, and might be a useful guide. The other is by

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

the Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher who wrote THE TUNDRA WORLD that Susan liked almost best. This is called CLEAR LANDS AND ICY SEAS: Ungava, Baffinland and eastern Hudson Bay. The present issue of TLS advertises as from Jarrold's IN THE LAND OF THE MUSK OX, by a John Glaever. You might look at it when next in Bumpus, but on the whole I am sticking to eastern arctic, and doubt that this pertains.

Oh yes, tell Hilda that now I know why I am interested in the Arctic, my inch. Exactly a week before I was born, Peary discovered the North Pole. It is obvious!

The release of Pound moves faster, it would seem, towards a solution. The radio this morning said that the lawyers were filing an appeal for his release, and that it was unlikely the Attorney General's Office would object. A telephone call to me from Washington this afternoon said the appeal was likely to be heard on Wednesday while Congress was in recess, to avoid debate on the floor and hence possible delays. I was asked if I could arrange for Ezra's return to Italy (this was not from the Pounds themselves). I was noncommittal, but wrote Mary de R at once saying if she was not coming over as planned, why not turn the money over to bring Dorothy and her father back. It would accomplish the same end even better.

Easter Sunday was nothing but pouring showers. But one had an extra hour for work instead of a picnic.

All love,

Norman

13 April 1958

Dearest Husky,

My first birthday letter: to thank you for the greetings which preceded today's sunshine and spring weather. One needed them, for we woke up Friday morning to find two inches of heavy snow already down, and more coming. One had to have the shovelers, eventually, to get into the garage, but by last evening it was almost gone. And this morning, to celebrate the occasion, your wire came. I bow low in gratitude for all these and for the cheque which was supremely generous on your part, especially in a year when there have been so many extra expenses for you. Perhaps if I come back from Denmark by Danish Air Lines I might stop over a day in Iceland with it, or a part of it. At any rate, since it will be (as you order) for me myself, I shall get a new light rainproofed topcoat. Alas, I have to have them tailored (a pity, because ready-made they are both inexpensive and attractive), and the one I have is over ten years old, with the lining too torn now again to be repaired, and the collar is worn away. So I do thank you, and if we manage our trip you will see it. Appropriate for calling on the prime minister of something. (I should have gone with the Gregories, on their spectacular trip.)

Now, as to Greenland: You should be able to get the matter pretty well in hand when you are in Denmark, and I feel helpless in giving advice on which trip to choose, how long we should be in Copenhagen beforehand etc. Permits, et al. I don't know whether Rita has an agent there or not for such details. And either before or after, I presume, I ought to kiss Hilda. My own guess is that four weeks, overall, for the trip itself would be enough, and perhaps as much as either of us ought to take. I mean, of course, the trip to Greenland. The voyage itself may be a good rest, and in this case I presume each of us ought to take a typewriter, and we could do our journals, you work on a story, and I do the revision of my introduction to Hawthorne's *Italian Journals*.

(To interrupt myself, having glanced through a letter: the Grieder envelope arrived, for which my thanks; I do not particularize since I am not opening the inner envelope until dinner together when the children are coming for a birthday cake Susan has baked.)

Graduation day at Yale is on June 9th, and I think I could manage to leave any time after that. My only engagement if on the 14th for the Mark Twain Frog Jump, but I suspect the frogs could manage to jump without my applause.

Now, I am truly delighted that your mind begins to spin with the Viking noval which has always been in you and will be born if we hold hands and you permit me to impregnate the cell by our trips. This is why I'd like at least a day or two at the museum in Copenhagen before we set out, and perhaps again afterwards. But it also indicates how useful it

really would prove if only somehow we could manage to get a glimpse of
one Viking ruin in Greenland. It would be expensive, but don't you
suppose that the two of us could hire a little plane at one of the
early Greenland ports where we stop, which could fly us (much as we went
to Chesterfield) to the spot for a few hours, and then either fly us back,
or (and this might be fun) take us to the next port where we could get
to know the settlement while we waited a few days for the boat to arrive.
Their first answer will be that this is preposterous, but if you make them
pinpoint the ruins and explain in each case why it can't be done, in the
end I'll betcha there will be one spot we can visit. Perhaps there will
be some place where they are actually excavating, in which case Ingholt
and others could present us with letters of introduction to use when we
drop out of the sky. One could point out that if we did this, we would
be glad to bring mail etc. I say it would be expensive, but really it
should be looked at not so much as a diversion but rather as an investment
in the quality of the books that will come out of it. Things seen take
on form, and can be extended; and you write best when the contour of the
land is known to you, when you have seen the waves break or not break on
the shore, the flowers grow or not grow. If it were a question of taking
a plane to a roulette room, then no. But this might be different. Probably
it can't be done, but we ought to work on it, and everything would have to
be arranged as from Copenhagen I would guess.

That rather does Greenland I think, but I have not been inactive
in regard to the North. Friday night Susan and I went to the Connecticut
Archaeological Society's meeting and heard a young archaeologist give an
illustrated lecture, with exhibits, of the Kayuk Complex of Arctic Alaska,
a dig he has been making in reference to the Caribou culture in the Baker
Range close to Point Barrow. It was, rather interesting, but in the end
we could answer some of the audience's questions which he couldn't, which
rather set one up a bit. Did I tell you that Brother Volant had sent down
another box, this time with a most unusual modern carving from Pelly Bay
(very primitive in strength) of an old woman juggling two balls? And with
it (he really is a treasure trove) came a fine Thule harpoon head with a
flint blade, and also a Dorset Culture (older than Thule) harpoon head
and one of those delightful Dorset combs that I so much admired in the
museum at Churchill. Susan goes to Seattle in early May, and is much excited
because there are several shops there that still carry eskimo artifacts,
and she hopes to find a West Coast tingmajuk or two, and we hope possibly
a Bering Sea Culture piece, or something Punuk. We have been briefed as to
where she should go and how to look. Perhaps I'll put aside a little from
my birthday check to help. Except for East Arctic and Greenland things,
where I gather a little en masse, I now want only a few very good pieces.
Fortunately I seem, according to Collins, to have a few in that category.

You spoke of Gladys' trip, and surely she would be foolish to miss
New York, and I think she ought to visit Washington. The truth is, I feel
pretty sure, that she is really a little frightened; although she will say
she is a little superior. Maybe she is even frightened of liking what she
sees, which would undermine some of her cliches. But we would love to see
her, and Pup would do something.

I think I forgot to tell you that I had a charming letter from George, who said that the only letters he was actually destroying were the late ones from B.M. The rest he would send over. But I was glad to be tipped off, for who knows what he might otherwise have done on the spur of the moment. He is anxious for me to visit him when I come over, but I'm really not sure how much can be crowded in. Hilda comes first after you, and I really rather doubt whether she will be able to make the trip.

Speaking of Hilda, will you just confirm again what you would like to have me write the American consul in Zurich? My idea would be to write him as though asking how she could best go about it, which would give me a chance to tell him about her, and the reasons for the delay. I always give Hilda's own reasons: vis-a-vis Pup.

You really were a husky in your letter about Pound. I know how you have felt about his attitudes, and we have never seen differently from each other about Jews or Negroes, or our attitude towards Mussolini. Actually Pound was never a Hitler man; he was only always violently anti-Communist. About the value of the Cantos, however, I'm afraid we have never seen eye to eye, for I do consider them a remarkable achievement and certainly the most ambitious poem of this century, really our only epic. As to his incarceration I have always said, as you know, that he was guilty of treason; but when I look at the really vicious war criminals, and see them all out and moving freely about, I cannot see why he should not be allowed to go back to Italy and die in his own home. The Square Dollar Series? These are reprints of Agassiz, Benton, Confucius, enollosa, Coke, etc.--none of them either anti-semitic or anti-negro; and the original editor of them who took me out so that we could sit in a car on a point of land overlooking the city described Kaspar (who has long since had nothing to do with the series) as demented. I agree that Kaspar seems to be anti-semitic, but if I were to refuse to be seen in the company of anyone who shared those views in one degree or another, I should be in a small and not necessarily select group. All that I do is to make it clear that I do not agree with them, and pretty soon the conversation changes. Freud and Sachs I admire, but I know many people who do not admire Freud, and for other reasons than the fact that he was a Jew. What troubles me most is that you should have been troubled, in a year when there has been so much that is disturbing to you. I ought not to have suggested to Hilda that she show you the description of the visit, or have mentioned the possibility that Pound would be freed. And I truly am sorry about that.

One does find one's self in odd company. Last Wednesday, Susan and I had cocktails with Mr Truman and Dean Asheson, and Thursday noon I was at a small luncheon party for both. They were certainly amusing and full of good anecdotes.

All love as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

20 April 1958

Dearest Fido:

A morning with you, while I read the proofs of GATE. What a curious and rewarding experience it is to see a thing actually in print. It takes on a new life and new dimensions. One would have thought that, with all the times I had read the manuscripts, I ought to have known it already; but I like it more and more and always in new ways. Actually they did an excellent job with the setting, and I found very few errors. I shall ask Susan to read it over tonight, and tomorrow have Mrs Wohlenberg, my secretary, read it. She typed the copy we sent to the Wolves, and so knows it well and might pick up something my eye had missed.

You said not to write to you at the Cecil, but I could not let so long a time pass without letters to you, and I hope you would have been disappointed not to have them. Here ought to have been one waiting for you on your arrival, but too many things have intervened: my usual Friday interview at the Institute with Lizzie's social worker, a great convention of 400 young people yesterday which I had to address, a stack of manuscripts to go through, the final check of an American Studies Newsletter to alumni to be gone through, and the annual appeal for funds for International House to be written. (Thank God, I shall be retiring from the presidency of that this spring.)

I do hope that all goes well with your missionary work in Denmark, and that plans can be made to get us on a boat to Greenland this summer. I shall begin tomorrow to get a new passport so that that will be in shape, take my shots, and I have already been to the dentist (two inlays, so that nothing will bother in that way). I still think probably better to do Greenland in any manner rather than to try for a substitute, and any spots would help with the plans for your new novel. By the way, I think I gave you the address of the young Dane who is returning to Yale in the fall (we have given him a two thousand dollar scholarship) with his wife and unborn child, to get his doctorate in American Studies before going back to Denmark to teach it. He will be frightfully strapped for money here for the next two years, and it occurred to me that if you ran on to any articles on Greenland Viking ruins etc which had not been translated into English, you might like to have him do some translating of them, especially in terms of little details that could later be worked into your fiction. He could be paid once he came to the States, out of the account, and in this way would not have the problem of taking it out of Denmark. In any event he might be a useful contact for you, and knows about the trip, since it was he who sent me the data I forwarded to you. His address is:

Adj. Erik Arne Hansen
Brøndbyøster Torv 25, St. t.v.
pr. Glostrup

He worked under me when he was here before, and is a very pleasant person. So is his wife.

2

It was I who sent you Inholt's brother's address, and you probably
forgot to take it down. I have just spoken with him on the phone and he
suggests that the best thing is for you to call

Paul Inhgolt
Landmands Bank
Holmens Kanal
Copenhagen

and identify yourself, for he wrote his brother who knows what you did for
Harald. He also reminded me that he had written about you to Helge Larsen
at the National Museum, who is in charge of their Greenland collection
and who you ought to see. I certainly urge that you. And don't be bashful.
Stress that you are going to do a novel, and that I will be writing and
lecturing too. They go for this, naturally.

I was glad you sent a PLAYER'S BOY to Blixen. The ones I sent might
take too long, but she will know about it, for in describing the novels
I said this one was your favorite.

They were out of the Stanwell-Fletcher, but I have ordered and will
send to Lowndes as directed. It's possible that you may be wrong about
the reuchen, since it deals exclusively with Greenland, the flora, fauna
and ornithology, and was done in collaboration with the greatest expert
on the birds of Greenland.

As to Lowndes, we rather expected something like to happen sometime;
and I have always rather favored the Sesame which is not a bad place at all,
and very central. The Doris idea also seems possible, but I should think
not until Trenoweth is gotten rid of. Incidentally Susan did write for her
permits -- tell Doris -- and has written a second time to inquire why they
haven't been sent her. She thinks perhaps this is due to the unusual timing
of a request for daffodil shipments; but they will probably be in Doris'
hands before you arrive in England.

Elsie remains a puzzle physiologically, but psychiatrically I think
the situation is reasonably clear. So is the consequence, and that is that
you must not permit her (for her own sake) to tie herself too close to you
in any new living arrangement in Switzerland. Something in the way of a
pension, perhaps, but not a joint menage. It will be Walter all over again,
without the real bond.

The small boat to take along to Greenland sounds a little impracticable
to me, and I should prefer the leased plane even if more expensive. But you
will know better about all this once you have paid your Copenhagen visits. Do
stay as long in Copenhagen as possible, for this is the one chance to get
things in order. You might ask, by the way, what sort of things we should
take along for barter or gifts. I mean: whiskey, cigarettes, etc. Or small
candies. "e were ill-advised for Hudson Bay, and only instinct saved us.

I blush to report a minor catastrophe. I cannot find the clipping of
the review of the book you were interested in. If you can remember the author
or the subject (it had something to do with elephants, I recall) I'll get to
work on it.

The last batch of letters were most interesting. I was part grieved,
part relieved, of course, to read of Margiad Williams death. She had great
character, and I like the appearance Mike Williams makes in his letters to you.
George is charming as always (I still think one could make an attractive
selection of his letters to publish some day.) Doris on the whole seems to
be improving in spirits and confidence. Natural enough once the tension for

hysteria is relieved. Still not a peep from Dorothy Richardson's friend about the correspondence, so I presume I am not being considered on her list. Perhaps Edel has intervened. Pat's letters are curious as always, and no one could be living in a more "literary" rhetoric than he is. In the oldest romantic tradition. Who can tell what it might develop into, but at the moment I think you'd be happier not to invite him to Kenwin. I am afraid he would press in emotionally, and your manners are different. But much better for him to stay for a bit in Paris than to go home to Riverside Drive with Horace and Marya; one sees the expected conflicts arising, and Marya's plans for him are really basically bourgeois and "safe." That O.B. has placed his Finland book is a relief. But one wonders how long he can go with this sort of writing. The public begins to want something a little more spectacular. I may be wrong, of course, but fashions of taste do change. It takes someone like Sachy to do the glamorous travel. I do remember Marie Monnier, having spent a memorable evening with her and Sylvia and Adrienne, at the latter's flat, just after the opening of Paris. I remember admiring Marie's silk embroideries so much; they were works of art, and rare in our time.

A card from Mary Hotson asked about sending magazines from you for Leslie here to me at the office to hold until his return in the fall. Of course; just send anything of the kind. It will be a simple matter to keep them, and one ought to get them out of the way on your side when the first chance comes. He is most grateful, I know. No word of his earlier book yet, and I wonder if it did not strike a snag with his publishers. They may have expected another 12th Night with its particularity. The theory of the circular stage is not so glamorous.

If you see the Blixen, or Hansen, give them my greetings. And store you mind with data. It shall be eager for first reports from the Second Bryher Expedition to Denmark. Quite Thule-like in its explorations.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

20 April 1958

Dearest Fido,

Here are few little Arctic souvenirs which I thought
might interest you, but not enough to send airmail to the Cecil.
They should however reach you safely by surface to Lewdes. The
letter from Moody's wife is particularly revealing, I think, and
I am rather grateful for the chance to have seen it; it rather
helps to fill out the picture, and I wish all the more that the
lure of the north was not quite so great for everyone who has touched
it. What would be interesting would be to find someone who was not
touched.

I really didn't quite know how to advise Horst about
achieving her trip to Afflinland. Perhaps you will feel that she
ought to be asked to go to Greenland, and indeed if you are otherwise
a little fearful of your cabin-mate (if they tell you you must have
one) I certainly would not object. Norton, however, who also wants
to make some sort of a trip, seems to me to be in another category.
His physical ailments could present a real problem; and the truth is
that I really had to do all planning to get things going even on so
short a hop as to Chesterfield. I did like him immensely, but at the
end I found we had rather run out of conversation.

The reception, and short on memory.

Chelsea Creek, which separates

# Antiquated Train Carries Modern Gear Into Wilds Of Hudson Bay Territory

By SAUL PETT

CHURCHILL, Manitoba (A) — The train wailed northward, along a single track in the wild Canadian bush, traveling a thin line between the 19th and 20th centuries. In the freight cars, complex electronic instruments for a new hydroelectric dam, precision tools for a nickel mine, radio parts for a bush pilot, food, clothing, wash tubs, even a hi-fi set. On the baggage car, two teams of Eskimo dogs dozing in the unfamiliar heat.

Outside, endless frozen lakes, stunted spruce and birch trees, snow over the muskeg unmarked except for the occasional tracks of moose or rabbit which had skittered along the right of way. Infinity of snow and trees and silence.

Inside, in the passenger coaches relaxes pandemonium.

Cree Indian children scrambled under and over seats, even up to the baggage racks. Chestnut-skinned bucks in leather jackets and tight jeans sipped soda pop and studied comic books. In the back, some one wound up an old phonograph and out screeched Elvis Presley.

In a seat near the potbellied stove, an ageless Indian woman in a limp house dress uncovered her breast and nursed her baby. No one seemed to notice.

In the Pullman cars, a variety of travelers drawn north to the new frontier by a variety of purposes—a missionary in white collar and black homburg, American and Canadian army officers returning to subarctic duty at a rocket installation, fur trappers and prospectors in heavy plaid shirts, two pretty British nurses returning from a brief holiday in London, back to another two-year tour of duty at a bush settlement, where the Indian population is 300 and the white, 11, and the nearest doctor is 400 miles away.

Returning from a binge in Winnipeg, a middle-aged miner with tousled hair and collar askew and tossed his girlie magazine aside

and moaned, to no one in particular:

"At 5 o'clock this morning, I told this woman—I can't even remember her name—I told her, get out of my hotel room. I've had enough. In eight weeks, I blew $3,500. That's enough. I'm going back to the mine."

We were all passengers on the Hudson Bay Railway, which three times a week travels the 510 miles from a town called The Pas in southern Manitoba up to Churchill, the end of the line, on frozen-over Hudson Bay.

Between the two towns, over the entire 500 miles, there isn't a settlement of more than 500 people. Most are just a tiny cluster of shacks, the inevitable Hudson Bay Co. store, a mission, a small school, a tiny "stopping house" or hotel and a depot, 50 or 100 or 200 people.

In this part of the world there are no connecting roads and air service is limited. Thus, the train is the lifeline and the train stops at every tiny settlement, all 77 of them. It takes 20 hours to make the run.

It sometimes takes longer, especially when the snow drifts are piled high in the winter or in the fall when migrating herds of caribou are so thick man and his machines can't get through.

At each settlement, the arrival of the train sets off the same cycle. The whole population turns out to meet the train — the Indians, the white trader, the trap-

pers, the Anglican or Catholic missionary, the tall, formidable Mountie, who seems 8 feet tall, who seems to see everything and say nothing.

## Named For Railroaders

The settlements have names like Finger or Nonsuch or Charlebois or Kellett or Thicket Portage. Many were named after railroad men who built the line in 1929 and after French and English explorers who came here 200 or 300 years ago. But 'generally, the places are better known by the railroad's vernacular, Mile 93 or Mile 440, their distance from the starting point.

Small as they are, some of the settlements serve as transportation centers for even tinier settlements deeper in the bush. Thus, the railroad is the main artery, the lifeline of supply, which leads to the capillaries, which lead to people all over the bush.

But the whole cycle starts with the Hudson Bay Railway, which by all odds must be one of the friendliest, most informal railroads in North America.

Five years ago an Eskimo woman came aboard, half-hidden in sealskins. As the ride progressed and she began to feel the heat, she peeled off layers of clothing. After a half-hour, she was nude to the waist but still seemed warm. The conductor halted the strip at that point for even way up here in the frozen north a man and a railroad have to drawn the line somewhere.

Register 12 Apr 1956

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 April 1958

Dearest Fido:

You will have thought me dead, and why not! Suddenly I
realise that it is really safer to send this letter too to London,
although I had meant to have it in your hands before you left Switzerland.
What a whirl it has been here, however, although not in the gayest sense
with which one could regard such events earlier in life. Some of the
background you will find in the letter I wrote to await you at the Cecil;
when your wire came I wrote them to ask them to forward it to London,
where I had already sent you a surface letter with some enclosures. But
to give you a synopsis of the week: Monday afternoon I had to go to
Hartford for the monthly meeting of the Mark Twain board; Tuesday night
Muriel Rukeyser and a friend (literary agent woman who knew John) came
up to see the new MacLiesh verse play: "J.B." (about Job) so that we had
to take them to dinner at the Lawn Club. Wednesday night we went to the
theatre to see Lunt and Fountaine in the play in which they have been
touring England. We had bought our tickets long ago. It was perfectly
dreadful; she has exquisite diction, but little else by now, and he played
like a madman, hurling himself around the stage as the only way to express
embton. The play, by some Swiss author, was bad beyond belief. Thursday
night Susan and I went to see the MacLiesh play, which I had not read
(telling the author quite truthfully that I preferred not to read plays
which I was shortly to see). The first act was gripping; the second act
boring: nothing but talk about Job, and the resolution of the play (spiritual
love conquers all) hardly brought out in any dialectic at all. But the
set was fine, and perhaps they can do something with it before it goes to
the Brussels Fair. The Yale Drama School put it on, and as a world premiere
it was something of a feather in their cap. Friday night we had been coerced
into going to a party for the art department and a gallery dealer or two in
New York, our role being that of elder statesmen. One interesting thing
however developed, when I talked with the dealer Betty Parsons who said she
had one very very fine eskimo carving from the northwest, with provenance,
which had been illustrated in some book or other. I gather she wanted 400
dollars or so for it, which is too expensive for me, I fear, but I think
I will take a look at it for educational purposes, since really good eskimo
art is hardly findable at all, or at any cost. One can see. Last night, we
took our poor tired bodies to the Yale faculty dance, since as chairman my
responsibility was to be a patron along with Susan. Today we have to give a
party for some forty graduate students and staff in American Studies. So it
goes especially at this season of the year.

I am troubled that there may be difficulties over the Greenland
boat trip, and still hope it can come off. Why don't you simply beard them
in their lair, saying you and I are authors. That is what counts! My feeling
now is that we should simply see what we can see as from the boat, and I am
a good wangler on shore as you know. One will get the feel of the coastline,
and could make plans for a re-visit another year, on more elaborate grounds,
if that proved by our experience to be wise. The only alternative might be
for me to try to get us on the Hudson's Bay Company boat, for a trip as far
north as Ungava, or possibly the one that goes all the way to C hurchill,

2

from which we could fly back by way of Montreal this time (there is the
new airline there, you remember). The advertisement from the local paper
I enclose only for your amusement. It followed the two articles I sent to
London, and these were obviously only advance notices. Actually it might
be amusing to visit Churchill again, see Mrs Smith and my blate brother.
Plans for tenting in the north would be a little difficult to arrange without
a good deal of notice. If we did do the H.B.'s boat, we might alert Horst
to share a cabin with you. But I will not inquire until we know more about
Greenland.

By the way the Canadian Government folder of their publications
advertises a new book "16th Century Maps Relating to Canada" "Contains a
group of maps relating to Norse voyages, etc." Shall I get for you?

I had to order the Stanwell-Fletcher, but a card says it is now
here, and I will send to London tomorrow. The missing clipping turned up,
and a copy of "An Elephant for Aristotle" went to London earlier in the week.
One of the students here said that there was only one workable Danish grammar
on easy grounds, and this is Paul Fenneberg's SPEAK DANISH, put out by the
Oxford University Press. Why not get Bumpus to send me one, and get one for
yourself. Handy to have in any event.

I should love to have the new edition of Yeats' poems which Jean
Untermeyer sent you. It is down my alley, but too expensive for me to have
bought for myself. Thank you.

Do tell Gladys that I shall be anxious to see her. And of course
I can give her anything you want as from the account. I would like to show
her Yale, and I think she might like a visit to Washington as well as to New
York. I can plan that with her, but think she ought to count on a fortnight
in the vicinity of New York. I will try to write her, but tell her you are
my ambassador.

I enclose the answer from Grove vis-a-vis the English edition. I
must say I am a little annoyed, and not frightfully pleased either about their
plans for the new cover for the Selected Poems. I wrote them at once to
say that I must ask Kat's permission, since the photograph was given them only
for the Evergreen Review. (Did I tell you that the "review did not want THIS
AUGUST DAY--too long, nor did they take any of Hilda's stories. I shall
try in other directions. T.A.D. is a favorite of mine). Have told Hilda I
"supposed" there would be no harm in the cover. I don't know how she will
react! I hate to truckle--how much nicer to deal with the Wolves--but I
do want Grove to keep on pushing the poems.

Will write again in a day or two, but this at least will eventually
bring you up to date.

All love as always.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 April 1958

Dearest Fido:

Your letter of the 25th came yesterday, with its corrections for GATE. I had sent the galleys back to Helen last week, as I told you, so it is impossible for me to work by the lines and I have written her that she can settle the matters with the very able Holsaert who is their copy editor.

Very dreary weather. It has poured for the past three days: those cold April rains which dampen the soul when they flood the ground. Last night I effected an organic relationship to nature when I came back down and taught an evening class.

The Bergner must have been fun to see; she always was, whether she was David or the Duchess of Malfi--one never knew which way she was crossing over, but the voice was always there: rich and erotic. I'd rather like to have caught a glimpse of her in a flannel nightgown.

I saw in this morning's paper that May Lamberton Becker had died. Somehow I remember that you knew her, or at least had had correspondence with her. I should always have liked to meet her. She gave me first prize in an essay contest when I was 12 or 13. She was book editor of a Sunday School newspaper, and the topic was "Books that have Meant the Most to Me." But I was a little angry at her: she awarded me first prize, but printed the statement that my essay was too eccentric to print, so she published the second prize essay. And I had so wanted to be in print. I think perhaps the rebuff was traumatic, and has kept me from writing as much since as I otherwise should have. I said the two books that had meant most to me were Horatio Alger's "Pluck and Luck" and Dostoievsky's "The Idiot." I rather wish I had kept a copy of it! To make matters worse, the prize turned out to be a booboo: my choice among three obviously unreviewable books that had come to her office. As the best of a bad bargain I took "Split Seconds": the story of new track records. But what a choice to offer an admirer of "The Idiot." Or perhaps she was proving my point.

All love to you, suitable greetings to my London friends, get to Oxford to see the Venus of Southampton at the Pitt-Rivers Museum, and assure Gladys that I meant the invitation I sent her.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

1 May 1958

Dearest Fido:

Will the may and the hawthorne be out to greet you on your arrival? If it is pluck a spray, as from me, and wear it with my love in your husky's collar!

I was glad to learn that the Cecil had forwarded my letter to Kenwin, so that you will not have been entirely in the dark, even though my confusion as to what is best is no solution. One doesn't quite know what to say. Perhaps we ought to put off Greenland until next summer, before which time all could have been more properly ordered, and situations like Hilda's will be more or less settled. (I do fear that a little!) This is only a suggestion, and in this case perhaps the best would be for me to fly directly to Zurich for a week with Hilda (I could even stay in town and commute if it would make it easier); then you and I could go for three or four days to Denmark, where we could study the Thule artifacts and I could see the officials and settle the matter for next year; and then the two of us could (at your suggestion) have a week in Iceland, or I could fly straight back to the States and my Hawthorne. My idea would be for you to come over for early September and pay the Hotsons your promised visit, and perhaps we could sneak in a little visit to Quebec, in order to round out your Canadian experience. Also a quick trip to Washington to meet Collins whom I know you would like.

The trawler trip sounds both expensive and too time-consuming for either of us this year.

Poor Hilda! I am sorry that she fears the x-ray so. I think her instincts tell her what has happened to her bone.

Poor Elsie! Yes, it is love she craves by one sense of definition; it is the possession of someone rather than possessions from someone. But I don't want her to possess you, and I hope you don't want to be possessed: your Fido-spirit was not made for a dog-pen. Couldn't we buy her a little "Pat" of the sort that keeps Agnes happy, so that she could worry, and possess, and sublimate?

As for O.B., shouldn't we simply include him in the list of my chicks if anything ever happened to you. I thought that was the plan anyhow, since it meant a way of adjusting weekly allowances to fit unforeseen shifts in need. I see another way of providing for exigencies, and if you and I share anything in the world then the mother hen instinct is a part of it.

A batch of letters came in this morning's mail, and I was delighted to see that Edith was in such good form. Her anthology sounds immense, and Auden's and mine will have to take a back shelf once hers appears. I only hope hers is not in one volume; what a weight it will be to carry.

["NORMAN\nHOLMES\nPEARSON", "233 HGS\nYALE UNIVERSITY\nNEW HAVEN · CONN", "4 May 1958", "Dearest Fido:", "I think of you wandering leashless in London, and only hope\nthat things are going in an orderly fashion. There is not much to report\nfrom this end since I last wrote you. Hilda has replied to do as I think\nbest with the Grove jacket for the new printing of Selected Poems, and I\nhave asked them to send the design up to me for me to see. I suppose they\nwill think I am far too finicky, but after our experience with Collins\nI am a little skittish on the matter of jackets.", "The steady procession of engagements has been a little wearing,\nand although we were supposed to be patrons of a performance of Desire Under\nthe Elms, given for the Yale Dramatic Association, of whose advisory board\nI am theoretically a member, I let my purchase of tickets be enough, and\ngave them away so we could stay at home. Thursday night I had to go out to\ndinner beforehand and then address an evening meeting on the training of\nteachers, sharing the platform with Ben Fine (the educational man of the\nN.Y. Times) and the Dean of the New Haven State Teachers College. Friday,\nSusan having gone on Thursday to Massachusetts for their state flower club\nmeeting, I kept free not knowing when she would return. But at least I\nworked at reading the dissertations for doctorates that come in at this\ntime of the year. Last night we took Mrs.ennett (just back from Florida)\nto a musical version of Cyrano, again given by the Dramat. As you know,\nno play is respectable in the States unless it is turned into a musical.\nBut I must say it was beautifully done, and one marvelled that the under-\ngraduates could do such a fine job of script, music, and sets and costumes.\nToday I work at the office in the morning, since this afternoon we give a\nparty for my graduate seminar: an annual affair which each professor seems\nobliged to do.", "A catalogue has come in of early children's books, issued by\nR.A.Brimmell, The Garden House, St. Mary's Road, Long Ditton, Surrey, which\nlists two books I have checked on the enclosed slip, neither of which is in\nthe "enty Collection, although similar volumes are. If you want to add them,\nwhy not have Maggs order and send on. By the way, it would still be a great\nconvenience in checking etc., if Maggs could send me a copy of the "enty\nBibliography. You ought to keep yours, but I should have one too.", "By surface to Kenwin I am sending a clipping about Mahagonny\nand Lotte Lenya, which I thought might interest you and Hilda. I have never\nheard it but gather it is good. Also an issue of the Library magazine with\nan account of the Masefield Collection which I thought you might like to\nsee and then possibly send on to the old man. I am not sure that anyone\nhere would feel free to do so.", "And -- don't squeal-- I am going to go into the bookstore\ntomorrow and order a copy of the clipped novel sent to Kenwin. It is probably\nkitsch, but may be fun. You can send back for the collection if you don't\nwant to keep.", "All love, Norman"]

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

Incidentally I had a nice note from Galdys, who seemed pleased at the invitation, and I shall write her at one of the American addresses in order to make final arrangements.

Eventually I suppose the D.R. presentation copies and collection should be here with the rest of the things, but had thought you might want to keep closer to you for sentimental reasons.

Glad you liked the card. The next time I send one it will be through the open mails. But I have no other similarly stuffed and transvested self-portraits so cherish it against the moments when my cabin-boy shipmate wants a resting place for a weary head.

Thank you for having Maggs send the Henty bibliography. I ordered an inexpensive first of a Hallentyne for the group the other day.

I shall be eager for your report on My Fair Lady, your visit with George, the prayer meeting with the Queenwood dames, etc. You have not really described the reunion.

All love as always,

18 May 1958

Dearest Fido:

I shall hardly finish this note tonight, but at least I can make a beginning as I work at my desk. My only fear is not getting home until too late after what is now already dark, so that draperies may be drawn against marauders. But this has been a nice Bryherish interlude for me, these past few days, for my daffodil Bryher has stood on my desk in solitary beauty (what a lovely little trumpet it has: like a laced/nosegay!) and I have been reading the copy of *Heart to Artemis* which has just arrived from the Woolford.

I do like it! And I like the way the pace has been tightened in the early sections. The proportions are better, the thing is vivid and meaningful, a true document. Did I gather from your last group of letters that, post reunion, you want to do the school section over again? The copy was a good one and there were only a very few spots I was at all uncertain of. For example, has something dropped out between 139a and 140? It is Sylvia Norman isn't it, not Sylvia? You may find others, I didn't. I gather you are going to take the first volume up to your meeting with Hilda. It seems to me that is a good idea, makes a period complete, and has the greater length this volume needs.

Not a great deal of business to handle as of the moment. Wolf writes that *slay set a fee of $200.00 for the use of his photographs*. I said Pantheon should write him, rather than have it seem like largesse from our side. An Indian firm has written Wolff offering 6.00 per volume for 200 copies of Gandhran and the Indian and Commonwealth rights, if we will change title to *Great Buddhist Sculptures: Masterpieces of Gandharan Art*: but since the books cost already 13.30 apiece, and the title page reprinting will cost more, and the new title isn't what the book is about, I said no. Just picked up a charming little Ballantyne for the collection, the first English, an 16mo: AWAY IN THW WILDERNESS; or Life Among the Red Indians and Fur-Traders of North America (London 1881).

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

As to D.R.'s and the Sitwells' books, or other valuable association copies of this sort, the point is to send them along whenever you feel you do not need them or want them with you. They could of course always be returned to you if and when you find a more or less permanent substitute for Kenwin. Meanwhile thanks for the packets of letters (early) from Pup. She has always had great charm as a letter writer.

Think this pretty much brings us up to date, but présume letters will be hurtling back and forth from now on.

All love,

Have been spending the day mostly in writing countless notes thanking people for contributing last year to the International Student Center, and hoping they will do so again--and endless task, but it does seem to bring the gifts in better than any other way. Fortunately I wrote a farewell report as president, and will send along a copy to you so that your collection of Pearsoniana can be complete.

How stupid of me not to have known your cable address. I ought to have. Perhaps I should register one for myself at this end. I might use my old service name of "Puritan." Or had it better be Huskey, now?

What a wonderful description of Willie came in this morning's post after I had written the other part of the letter. I liked him very much the one evening he spent with me years ago.

Did you order the two Danish-English lesson books in London. I think we should each have one, and not trust to buying one in Denmark.

Had my smallpox inoculation this morning, and my first shot against typhus. My typhoid shots begin on Wednesday. Is there anything else I should take?

30 May 1958

Dearest Fido,

Today is a public holiday for all except the university, but since examinations are nearly over a good many of the students have gone and only two have been in to see me. I luxuriate in the chance to clear my desk, although I shudder at the two ms volumes of poetry I must finish and send off at the end of the afternoon. This has been a particularly hard season in respect to work, and to top it I have had to send out some 400 personal letters appealing for funds in the annual drive of the International Student Center. At least, however, I did the brochure in terms of a lengthy explication which made it possible to cut down the length of the individual letters almost to notes. Now we shall see what happens. A real holiday will come a fortnight from now when I lay down the presidency before a successor.

Last night I held a picnic at the shore for some fourteen seniors in American Studies, as a token of their good work; and this pretty well ends the entertaining we must do this year for the students and faculty. One or two little events to attend, including graduation and a board meeting at Philips Academy in Massachusetts. Then I must rush to my three articles on Hawthorne I have promised, and the tidying up of the last of the edition of the Italian Notebooks. I hope to have the footnoting done before we leave for Copenhagen, and take a first draft of the introduction with me so that I can go over it on the boat.

Almost nothing to report since my last letter to you, the week have been purely business and until I hear from you (probably now next Monday because of the holiday) there is nothing to add to the Greenland trip. Except to say that my innoculations have proved worthwhile by the very evidence of their angry appearance; and the first typhoid shot brought such immediate discomfort that the disease itself would have been preferable. I was in agony!

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

1 June 1958

Dearest Fido,

I came down to the office today, after a little gardening to celebrate the sun, on the hope that a letter might have come from you yesterday, went through the masses of unsorted mail in the general delivery room downstairs and found one! So I am rewarded. Silences I have explained. One can't quite make up for them, but they should be fewer now that the examinations are over. I did drive yesterday to see my mother in Gardner and found her unbelievably slight and frail but still with equally remarkable determination to enjoy herself. She has a temporary housekeeper while her regular and favorite one goes on a three month holiday to Finland but mother accepts the substitute in good spirits. She was wearing a scarf you had sent her once from the Heimatswerk; she delights in its softness and light warmth. France keeps me intrigued of course, and on the whole I am glad that DeGaule is in. I was never an overwhelming admirer of him or his views, but that they are certainly what France needs now, and therefore we do too since we need a stronger France. Nor do I think he will be pushed around by us or anyone else. Dulles and Washington are certainly bewildered, but one can be grateful that he is keeping his mouth closed.

**Arctic.** I am still a little bewildered, and not quite sure that the "over the top" planes have permission to refuel, today, at Thule since this is a special and very restricted American airbase. Galdys's plane, as she wrote you in her letter of the 5th did not stop at Thule but at Frobisher in Baffin Island, and then went on to San Francisco direct flight, but passing over Churchill. Anchorage would be on route to nowhere. With Frobisher available and being developed for all such flights, there would be no reason for Thule, as there might have been in the past for an emergency flight. (What of course strikes me most is that one does not of course come very close to the pole on such flights. You may be right, but my own belief is that the only way to return from Thule would be by Air Force planes to Springfield, Mass., and although I might be able to work this out for another year, I would not dare risk its working out on short notice. The September trip from Copenhagen up and back to Danish Thule or near it is another matter, and I still would be happiest if I knew what you really wanted to do, for my heart only beats easily when yours does. If only we were more often together! But we will make our plans for next year anyhow. Last year broke the ice; this year helps to channel passage through it. We will be thoroughly huskies after that.

**Denmark.** I am glad you approve of my taking Susan for a week before sailing in Denmark, but I think we should plan four days together there so that we can buy last minute things to take out with us. Especially if you want to pay your respects to the Baroness. I can have gotten most details in shape before you come, and taken a drive or two into the country with Susan and the Hansens and Ingholms. I had thought, if you came earlier, we might flip to Oslo for overnight to see the Viking ship there and the museums, but this is of course not necessary. Going on the basis of the Julienshab trip, if we get

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

2 June 1958

Dearest Fido,

GOD DAMN Aldington! What does he think he's doing? And what business is it of his to give suggestions on so vitally important a matter as this: he, who behaved so wretchedly. I simply don't see the relevance of his remark about England's being much freer and more liberal; it may well be, but it has nothing to do with Hilda's situation or her course of life, or anything else to do with her. And what if she does renew her passport every two years: of course it's a nuisance, but not that much of a one. And as for my being a nationalist, (I thought Americans, hah! always been nationalists ever since the first settlers landed, before the Revolution. So have British been. So what! And as for my wanting to make her the national poetess heroine, blooey! I would like her to receive a prize or distinction or two among the many she deserves, but that is for her sake. In themselves prizes mean nothing. As for the national poetess heroine, she's already crowned herself with a cockade hat! She's elected for life, is our Dame Marianne. And she likes it as much as she deserves it. GOD DAMN Aldington, said Tiny Tim, glaring down at them all.

No, don't worry about Hilda's renewal of passport. One can always manage this despite the impertinences of individual clerks in consulates. But of course all this only makes me more determined at least to see that things are set in special order for the moment when, if, Hilda will take back her American papers. So if Philip could get me a certified copy of the marriage certificate, I will send it to the Washington lawyers and have their opinion in writing with me when I call on the consul at Zurich. I can at least see that there is no legal confusion in the consul's mind.

I talked with Ingholt by phone today and he advises S.A.S. which flies direct to Copenhagen from New York, would make Susan's return simpler, and I could simply transfer to Swiss Air etc on my return via Zurich. The main thing now seems to be to be certain of our reservation on Disko.

Brother Vollant will be enchanted with his rosary I'm sure, and although I am loth to take credit I will do so in order to ensure continuance in what he calls the union of prayer. More significant is the fact that he thinks he could arrange for me to share a double bed with an Oblate at Pelly Bay or some such spot in a future year. My next step is to persuade him to choose a mission with two double beds so that you can share it with the second priest. You see how I think of you always?

His address is Brother J. Vollant, O.M.I.
Vicariate Apostolic
Baie d'Hudson
Churchill, Manitoba.

Perhaps Mons. Hemnick could include the affidavit with it. You might warn Kenneth that it supposed to come from me.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

6 June 1958

Dearest Fido, M

No letters for several days from you, but one of the 3rd was in
this morning's mail and I hasten to send a note in return. I leave for Andover
and a Board meeting there over this evening and tomorrow, returning Saturday
night early in order to be here for a Sunday party we must give for some seniors
who are graduating on Monday.

I'll try to find out about the plastic casts on my return and write
you. I do presume it would be worthwhile taking a small first-aid kit with us
for our period on the tiny boat out of Juliana-haab, but imagine that the ship's
stores will take care of the rest. It's hard to know what to take. I shall lay
in a store of sleeping pills and dramomime (or will you get the latter for me,
plus any anti-cold pills that Prutting might recommend. Why don't you write
him and have him write me, so that I can secure at this end.

The book in question is SPEAK DANISH, by Paul Fenneberg, and it is
published by G.E.C.Gad in Copenhagen, and by Oxford University Press in London.
I am told that it is the best, or at least the most practicable.

I ought to have thanked you too for the emblem book which is a little
beauty and goes well with the similar one we already have. Not the same one, of
course. The Yeats variorum edition has also arrived for which I am very grateful.
It is so very expensive that I should never have been able to buy it for myself,
but it is of course inavluable when one deals as a teacher with Yeats' poems.

Have been taking a few books on Greenland out of the Library and will
begin to study them. I don't Isabel Hutchinson but will see if they have it.

Delighted that you have heard from Masefield. There were a number of
accounts of him in American papers because of his 80th birthday. I daresay only
Edith has mixed feelings about wishing him a long life!

I wait with bated breath to hear whether we get berths on the Disko
V, and will proceed from there. Ingholt recommends we fly SAS which I think we
will do, as directly to Copenhagen, and giving the fun of a new line.

9 June 1958

Dearest Fido:

A wretched muggy day. It rained this morning for the graduation exercises, for the first time in eight years, and thousands of relatives and parents (usually 7000 attend) had to be content to stand in another building and hear the program broadcast, since the only available building can house no more than the nearly 2000 who graduate plus one parent, apiece. No very interesting honorary degrees, except perhaps for one to Alfred Knopf (surprising but pleasant and I daresay deserved) and one to the Dowager Marchioness of Reading whose virtues are no doubt better known to you than to me.

But it has turned into an "Arctic" day after all, with three letters from you in the mail, plus my passport! I am sure you were once right about Thule and the airlines, but I am pretty sure that Frobisher has now taken its place. As to the Disko V, I shall be much relieved when we finally know and can make certain plans. I shall ask Susan tonight about Oslo. It might well be a good idea. But what a fool's memory I have. I've taken books on the Viking ships out of the library and realize that I did see it on my one visit there after the war. But hardly in the mood I would now bring. As to Copenhagen, so be sure to come in time so that we can entertain and be entertained, as you suggest. And don't forget that there is some importance in getting the Danish attitude toward Greenland, much as we did the Canadian toward the Northwestern Territory. And I agree that we ought to wait in Copenhagen until the 24th or 25th before going on to Zurich. I will need two baths at least, and perhaps more important will be my wanting to take a second look at the Greenland material at the Museum after having been there. I will also want to pack up certain things to ship directly back to the States.

The equipment plans as outlined by you make excellent sense. A tent in Zurich would be fine, and also my sleeping bag. I shall get another American parka, but like yourself now feel justified in having an anorak. However, I might later on get a white parka, but think this a little on the chi-chi side for me. Will check with Susan on the measurements again, but I am still happy with my nice green sweater and do not want to overload. Reading material, writing paper, ink etc we will pick up in Copenhagen.

Yes to your plans for coming to the States. This means the best weather, although I shall not try to do Maine with you. This will give me a chance to get the term started.

Will have to wait until Disko confirmation is in before seeing to plane tickets.

Yes, do rough out the rest of the first volume of *Artemis*. Polishing can come later, and I know of no one who can polish better than

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

you do.

De Gaulle? I was never an admirer, but I fear I think someone
like him is France's only chance. Soustelle, behind him, is the more
dangerous one. But France must have a firm hand. Taxes are in a
scandalous state of indifference, the French being so used to having
the British and Americans pull them out of financial fire. And the
party system in politics has become so confused that the small rump
groups can swing anything by the majorities they help to make. I think
the only difference between our views is that I think all this goes
far back of Suez in time, despite the fact (mind you) that the cross
of Lorraine is be-dullesed.

One is envious of your Swissair card. My little travel card is
nothing in comparison.

Did I remember to write you that the first batch of D.R. material
from Rose Odle has already arrived, and I have now checked it for acknowledge-
ment to her and have written her in thanks. I do feel that more attention
will in the long run be paid to it on this side than in the U.K. Since
Edel is planning to start his biography soon, I shall rest with the unpublished
ms on the basis that the biography will awaken interest in her work. I think
you hit her best and weakest points precisely.

Gladys is to come to New Haven Thursday morning, and I will devote the
day to her. Will show her Yale and then the shore and a drive in the
country. Susan will be in Providence but hopes to be back for dinner if
Gladys can stay. Rita pre-bought her a Grayhound bus ticket (round trip)
between New York and New Haven, but I have told her to come by train. The
bus ride is fearful, only along smelly and crowded Route I (buses can't go
over the nice Merrit Parkway I take you on). And the train ride along the
shore is not only half the time but rather attractive as it goes by the
water.

All love as always.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 HGS

13 June 1958

Dearest Fido:

This is the first of the letters by which I shall try to train my touch to the Olivetti, before I start out for the wilds with you. Last year, there was so little time for letters, or so little convenience in the way of a stand on which to type, that I hardly got more familiar with it than the queer spacing above seems to indicate for me now. So forgive the disorders. Forgive also the fact that there seems to be not very much of importance to say.

Gladys's visit yesterday was a pleasant one, I thought, and I was glad to have a chance to show her the countryside in this neighborhood. She was here from 11:30 in the morning until the 8 o'clock train at night. Fortunately Susan got back from her meeting in Newport R.I. in time to have dinner with us at the Lawn Club so that Gladys could meet her and be shown the treasures of the greenhouse in a proper fashion. After I met her at the station I took her for a drive to Guilford where we lunched at the old stone house by the fishing port (we have lunched there with you and Hilda) and then took her by back roads to Johnson's Point to see our summer place. Then made a thorough tour of Yale: the library, a few colleges, and the art gallery before we went to the house. She did seem to have enjoyed her visit to the Coast and to Chicago, and was most grateful to you for making it possible.

A letter from Brother Vollant said that the rosary had arrived, apparently before my letter could have reached him, so he thought of it only as holy beads without the fragrance of the papal blessing. But he was most grateful, and since Islay had told him that they were from you and me (faithful to your command, I had left you out, which may puzzle him), and so our very dear Brother asked me to thank Mme Bryher for him and to say that he remembered you faithfully in his prayers.

In this morning's post came a group of four books chiefly on Shakespeare. Were these for me or to hold for Leslie?

Great fun with the envelope of letters in yesterday's mail. What a wonderfully vivid picture Pup manages to make of the children's lives. She picks out the right incidents, and then gives the proper twist. She really has a talent. I was sorry by the way that Gladys missed John and Perdita who were in Vermont with Nicholas. But she did see Valentine and Elisabeth Bryher, and admired them immensely. Because she was alone in town, I called Haven to entertain her, but the two Mrs Wolves got mixed, and they had not as yet met when I saw Gladys. Perhaps they will today.) Edith was in her best form about the Oxford trip. Rose Odle's account of her nursing aid really scandalized me. What could R.O. have been thinking of to give such an agreement under any circumstance! It is beyond belief, and she is awfully lucky to be out of it. Marianne's letter was rather sad to read. Something must be happening to upset her. I notice she seldom speaks of her brother these days. Do you suppose the bond is not so close as it was?

Enough for now. I shall not post until tomorrow in case a letter comes in from you then.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 June 1958

Still Dearest Fido:

Saturday brought not letter from you, but at the same time gave me almost no moment at the office; for it was a day spent at the Mark Twain Memorial in Hartford where they were holding the annual Frog Jump (if you remember the jumping frog of Calaveras County--the story that made him famous--you will know the example). At any event some 80 children had live frogs of one species or another, and the affir was great fun and good for the Memorial, although time consuming. Sunday morning went to a committee meeting to award prizes for the New Haven Arts Festival which opens on the Green today; and in the afternoon we had the wedding of the daughter of a good friend to attend. Yesterday was Alumni Day, but did bring two letters and a package of the old. So I can at least make a note or two in answer to yours. But don't expect a logical sequence of comments.

As to air mattresses, they are certainly more comfortable and easier to pack than cots. I only hope they are not too expensive. Many thanks for the sleeping bag! You are a good Fido in your preparations! And for the tent, which sounds superb. I am not sure what to say about the Butor, especially when we are going for so short a period. I wonder if we couldn't pick up a little primus in Julianehab with local fuel there. After all it is only for overnight, and my own instinct would be to get the ship to put up a supply of sandwiches etc, and depend on the primus chiefly for coffee and tea, and possibly soup. Our bacon and eggs, which will not mean much cooking. My instinct is to go light; -- but I surely went too light for Chesterfield.

I was sorry to learn that I would miss Heydt when I went to Küssnacht, since it would have been helpful to me to have a talk with him privately about Hilda and her condition. But I suspect it would be wise for him to take a quick trip over just to keep his contacts. I agree that one might help if Kat comes with him. Otherwise it would establish a bad precedent. One might arrange a flip for her at the end of your visit, so that you could spell each other for a fortnight in New York, and he could take her back with him.

Have heard that there is a newer drug than dramaine, perhaps it is your Ciba --in which case you could get enough for both. But if Prutting advises otherwise I can pick up what is necessary on this side, as well as anything you may want for Doris.

My situation being much like yours--three articles to finish which were due June 1st, plus redoing of notes for Italian journals. So have dropped idea of studying Danish. Perhaps someone on the boat --if-- will help us with a few words; but we will need the grammars and easy first steps.

I am very curious about the incident of the garage in Lausanne and the supposed guarantee of the car by you. I do hope you will keep pressing the police to follow this up, and obtain as detailed descriptions as possible. If successful once, the couple is likely to try it again. And again again!

Many thanks for the postcard. I had already bought the cards for Gladys to send with us, when I went to the office and found yours which in a sense made ours an answer.

I will check into transistor radios at this end. But do you really think we need one. A heavenly aspect --to me-- of our Chesterfield excursion was the fact that we heard nothing of what was going on in the world. And so far as the boat is concerned, they will of course be hearing and convey to us. But things are in such a rotten mess all over--France, Algiers, Cyprus, Lebanon etc., that my instinct is to retreat into the shadow of the Vikings. What do you think?

You are back in your best agency mood and skill by getting the reservations at the Cecil. I am going to New York tomorrow to work at the Morgan Library, but first will go to S.A.S. and discuss reservations with them. If we have to leave a day or two earlier I will write you and see if Susan's and mine can be pushed back a day or two. We are both delighted that you will arrive on the 21st. Be sure eventually to let me know flight number and time of arrival so we can meet you at the airport. This will give us a good number of days together for last minute things. As I wrote you, we had concluded it was better to stick to Denmark and see it and make our arrangements under less pressure. I have several letters to curators that might give us good angles for our trip -- again if.

By early October it might be possible for me to skip a Thursday class, or rearrange, so that I could at least take you to Maine and spend a couple of days. Also possible that you might want to fly out to Ohio and see Hodgson's; but we can plan as of Copenhagen.

All love as always,

Norman

23 June 1958

Dearest Fido,

I waited until this morning's mail in order to be able, as I had hoped, to report on my application for reservations on the plane to Copenhagen. I went in to New York last Wednesday, as I think I wrote you, in order to speak directly with S. A.S. rather than through an agent about the reservations and especially about shipping over luggage by air freight. It was I think worthwhile, although I have had to wait since then to know that all was in order. The best plane, it appeared, was one which left New York on the afternoon of the 18th of July, and arrived in Copenhagen on the morning of the 19th at 9:30 (12 hours flying time in a plane which carries only 32 passengers at the same rate as usual). We have dormette seats on the way over, but I have reserved a sleeper for Susan on the return flight on the 26th. (As I told you, I have sold some stock to pay for Susan's flight, but will pay for my ticket out of the money you sent me.) Now the problem is that the rooms at the Cecil for us are reserved for the 20th; and since you have the earlier correspondence, could you drop the Cecil a note and ask if the reservation could be advanced so as to include the night of the 19th. It would save a week if you could do it, but if you prefer to send me the details then I can write from here.

I should think it would be a fine holiday for Joan to be able to go to Denmark, and it will be nice to meet her. Susan and I are sorry to think that we will not be seeing as much of you as we had hoped to during the week, but there may be times when you will want to show Joan the same parts of Denmark that I will want to be showing Susan. I had even thought of an overnight trip to some of the islands. The daughter of a friend of ours works at Danntourist, and her father says she will be delighted to help with any special plans we might work out. I do want to see the museums, and especially some of the officials who might be helpful with the Greenland plans, but I can do this on my own, as well as pay the courtesies to Ingholt's brother. My Danish student I thought might be a good guide and courier for us.

S.A.S. says I can send 100 pounds excess as cheaply as a lesser weight, so that should be sufficient. I will take your parka and borrow my son-in-law's for myself (because of the one which was lost by a student). I have now been able to ask about transistor radios from a young man who works in that field. He says the best are now the Americans (he himself is British), Motorola and Zenith, but the only model which would be practical to take (because of the distances) costs about $165.00. Don't you think this is a little expensive, by original cost and transportation, for the very few days we should be using it? However, I leave this entirely to your judgment and the intensity with which you want to keep up with the daily news broadcasts.

23 June 1958

Dearest Fido,

I wrote you this morning, and the letter lies on my desk ready to be mailed with this, in answer to yours of the 20th which came in this afternoon's mail. Am still in such a flurry that I hardly know what I have answered and what not answered, so will hurry off notes despite the danger of repetition.

You comfort me with Olivetti trouble, for my fingers are too used to this old typewriter which I first got in 1932. Keys stick and the like on this one, but I know the feel of it.

Yes, I do think air mattresses are best, but no reason for cots also on such a brief excursion as we make this time. Better to buy air mattresses in Zurich than waste time in Copenhagen searching them out. As to sanitation it might be worthwhile having a collapsible stool such as one can get on this side, but with care and our own tent I do not think we will need a second just for that. Bacon eggs and the like I can cook nicely; but are you really sure we can't buy anything in Juliana-haab. I gather it is quite a little port, with nothing primitive about it. And don't forget, if we can hire a boat, the owner can get us things. They have mutton, chickens, and cattle. Also we can get from the boat, and I suggest they make up innumerable sandwiches, and we stick to tea soup and the like which we can pick up a few tins of in Copenhagen.

Transistor mentioned again in my morning's sletter. So unless I hear to contrary I will take the answer as no.

Something can be worked out for Maine and the Hotsons, but shifting of dates won't help, and your present plan seems best in every way. My trouble is that once Yale starts in first week of September I must not be away long because of administrative and teaching duties.

Zurich. You know the hotels well enough. The Ubockenhof was very nice when I stayed there before, and it is the only place I have actually stayed. Better to be where you are. Only I had myself wondered if actually it would not be better to stay in Zuri than at Kusnacht, especially if I had to make more than one call at the Consulate. One can do it easily as from Zurich, but otherwise Kat would want to know why I was going in so often.

Glad the garage matter worked out. I had dramatic possibilities running through my mind.

Glad I guessed correctly about Shakespeare books for Hotson. The Osberts arrived safely. Have you discovered what happened with the Honors list?

Volant was delighted as I told you with the rosary, but had
not mentioned the papal kiss. Perhaps because he thought I knew it
already.

Hard to know what to think about 'eydt and 'alitta's warning.
She is a wonderfully fine person, but I think likes to paint the
blackest possible picture, possibly because she knows most people
err by looking only at the bright side of anything and so stumble.
She had made plans for 'eydt, and these have been changed. But I am
sure it is important for him that he should finish his training,
otherwise there are always the excuses and blames in the future.

Am eager to see the rest of Artemis, but presume it will not
come until too late for me to read carefully.

Have not made up my mind what to do about the 'aronness, although
four may be rather too many to take to her. I had thought Susan might
be useful with her comments on gardens etc.

All love again.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 June 1958

Dearest Fido,

Not much to write about, except to thank you for your letter of the 23rd which did a quick flip to this side. I too wish we could hear from Disko V. I am sure all is well and will be well, but somehow it is difficult to get down to choosing gear etc when there is a possibility that all will be called off. Have you by the way written the Cecil advancing our reservations so that they are good for the night of the 19th? You did not say.

A letter in today from the Washington lawyers with full citations etc for me to present; but I shall simply take it with me rather than send it ahead. It will be helpful. One thing I might ask you quietly, and that is whether Hilda ever voted in an English election.

I gather than Leslie's desire for a Hilliard miniature is linked to one of his new discoveries. Not knowing Hilliard or the discovery it is impossible for me to comment. Would it be better to have some one like Maggs do the negotiations, or at least advise on the side. I have no idea what sense Leslie would have of the market value of things of that sort.

I shouldn't wait until mid-October for the boys, and therefore tie yourself so closely to them. With all your duties and calls to be made, you are certainly twice-over them in responsibilities. And, as you say, the Wolves might have some schemes for GATE; and Maine gets colder as the season advances. No reason at all why we shouldn't visit Glynn's stone. It would be fun.

Both Islay and Kenneth sent beautiful cards of change of address. I shall wait on you for a report of the new setting.

All love as always, with a glottal slop,

58

3 July,

Dear Mr. Fido,

I did want to write you today and yesterday and the day before that, but I do not have the time to write the article which anyone else — you for example — could have dashed off in a moment. One and a little more to go. But, oh this lead! I was in N.Y. on Tuesday to see Parke Bernad about Doris' sundial, get money in krone, see the Wolters, check quotations for the articles, & see Pound up on the best. It was over 90%.

All love,

5 July 1958

Dearest Fido,

I still want for news from the Disko, but suppose now we
will have to wait until Copenhagen. (Of course the truth is I don't know
anything about it one way or the other, and my speculations flutter with
each breeze).

It has been swelteringly hot the past few days, but today is
overcast and a little chilly. Rather too bad for the family picnic we are
giving tonight for some 35 or more, but perhaps it will not rain. That is
the chief prayer on my lips.

Thank you for writing to the Cecil. It's stupid of me but I
don't know its address. However the taxis from the airport will presumably
know and take us there. If you think of it, could you send me Ingholt's
brother's name and address? I do not seem to have saved it. However Ingholt
will presumably have told him when we come, and the brother can contact me
at the hotel if he wants to.

Will wait to do anything about collapsible stool until I hear
from you. Might be rather expensive to ship over air express from this side.
The mosquito nets are already here from Brother Volant. Will try to get you
a pair of the nylon fishing trousers from New York, but will wait for your
next letter in which you say you will send your measurements.

Sorry to have missed saying anything about hotel in Zurich at
the end. My guess is we should say August 23rd and 24th in Copenhagen and
fly to Zurich on 25th, although I notice that 24th is Sunday so we could not
accomplish much in Denmark and might perhaps better fly that day. I leave to
you. I should get plane back to States on 1st, 2nd or 3rd of September,
certainly not later because of the immense backlog of work to be done before
the term begins. The 1st would be best to leave, as it would mean a free
Sunday at home.

Delighted at Osbert's Companion of Honour, and Edith should be
pleased. I'm not sure I see him as O.M., but this is perfect.

As to Artemis, it would be fine if you could bring a copy along
for the boat. Kurt is very anxious to have the other one in Switzerland to
read. He will be at the same hotel as before, outside Zurich. "Elen was to
have given me the name and address but has forgotten. I will send when it comes,
but perhaps you remember it.

As to Moore, I know him and think I can handle the matter of
remarks about H.D. in the letters. But think it better to wait to talk to her
about it when I am at Kusnacht.

Halen says that Eanthon also has had to put "A Novel" on jacket,

since their salesmen felt as Collins did.

Have not had a chance to talk to library about Swiss books, but
gather there is no hurry on this. I am sure they would like it or at least
what they do not already have. Of course a list would be simpler than sending
all over for choice from them.

One good break has come through my meeting with a young astronomer who was at Narsarssuak for the total eclipse a few years ago. He has loaned me their official scrapbook of data and pictures, including the various ruins along Tunugdliarfik Fjord; maps etc., so for the first time I really have a sense of where we will be going if we go. "It says it is superbly beautiful, and should not be too uncomfortable especially since the farmers have pleasant homes. They raise cattle, sheep, chickens, etc., so we shall not starve. Have the names of the farmers. One speaks a little English. Also the two chief books on the ruins, which I may bring over just in case I can't buy in Denmark. Now all I need is time to read them in.

Must rush and get steak, rolls, ice cream etc. All love as always.

Norman

8 July 1958

Dear Mr Fide,

Your bath in this morning.

Hand! You are a good Husky. It
will work out as originally planned, I
feel sure - and we come any low.

I forgot to mention how exciting
the bridge's letter was about Glynn's carving.
Of course we will see it.

All love.

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

16 July 1958

Dearest Fido,

You will have had my cable, which I hope you could understand.
There is hardly time for a letter to reach you at Brunner's before you leave
for Copenhagen on Monday, but I can at least try. Perhaps you may have decided
to arrive there earlier. Monday will be a busy day.

Everyman saga was of course as you gathered just to have the
Greenland ones to read on boat, and I thought it proper after seeing it cited
as most convenient. You have read them; I have not.

Little Susan was most grateful for the check. You were wonder-
fully kind; we all bless you!

Presume that if the boat sails early it will be correspondingly
early in returning. So Susan is planning to fly over to be there as of or about
the 19th, but I will check in Copenhagen when I get there. "e can have a week
together, but she wants to be back in the States by the 1st at latest, so I
will come on to Zurich. You may want to stay and see viking ship and islands
with us, or have intermission with your accumulated mail in Kenwin before we
join again in Zurich. If this we can discuss.

Have not read Aman, but will do so this winter. Much to keep
me busy. Have read seven ms volumes of poetry now; only two sets more to
go. But have not begun to pack yet, although I have taken a few things to
the shore in preparation. Got you a not quite satisfactory fishing pants,
but better than nothing. Am having Usher fly me over to Idlewild Friday
afternoon and will be in Copenhagen Saturday at 9:30. As Susan says, the
really irritating thing would have been for us both to have gone over and
then found the boat sailed on Tuesday! We must relearn our arctic noncha-
lance.

All love as always. It will be wonderful to see you. Love to

Hilda.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

12 September 1958

Dearest Fido,

A week has been dissipated, but not my thanks or memories of
the summer! It was glorious--quite beyond expectation. I have been wicked.
Almost all of the packets of film have been coming in at my office. When I
might have been writing you, I leaned back in my chair and held the slides
against the light of my window while I relived so much. There are some good
ones which I think you will like. Shall I have some prints made and sent to
you to show Hilda and at Kusnacht and in England; or wait until you come over
to choose what particular ones you want? Do let me know. In combination with
what you took, we have a first class record. And, some time, let me have a
copy of your notes. I did not take the original with me, and so have none.

This afternoon your cable came. You know how pleased it made me,
and most of all because it was Hilda's own decision. It was phoned to me, and
the operator mumbled, "What is it?" I asked. She repeated, and then added: "Isn't
that a funny thing to send!" I think she must have thought you meant, instead of
"Hilda took oath today," "Hilda swore at you today."

My trip back was uneventful and pleasant. Swissair takes exceptionally
good care of one, and my bunk was extremely comfortable. I had a good night's
sleep. You asked for a comparison between Swissair and S.A.S. It is hard to make.
The Viking is probably more de luxe, with a little more room between the seats
and in the lounge and for walking up and down the aisles. Also somewhat more
"dog" in the service. But for pure comfort they are equal, and that is what counts
most.

The pile of things on my desk was formidable, but thanks to Mrs
Wohlenberg there was little that was imperatively urgent, and by this weekend most
of the letters have been written, and a goodly number of new students interviewed
and their schedules begun to be made out. Mrs Bennett has decided to sell the
house in which she lived behind us (the doctors tell her she must not have to walk
up and down stairs), and I have been trying to persuade a friend or two to move
in. That took time, and so far without results. It doesn't matter frightfully;
we shall simply put up a fence to protect our rear. Otherwise too many children
choose it as a playground. What we will miss most (or at least I shall) are the
maids, who when Susan was away used to come up daily to water the plants.

There were a number of yellow packages of letters which arrived after
I left. If I seemed ignorant of anything you thought I should know, that is the
reason. A new envelope came in this afternoon but I have not yet examined it.
Lethbridge's book has arrived, and four packages from Maggs had come before I did.
Still no bibliography, but books from Robert's collection and a few kinderbuchen/

Talked with Helen on the phone, and she looks forward to her visit with
you. Hutchins review in the Tribune was excellent; nothing from Prescott as yet,
but Helen says the reviews in Sunday Times and Tribune are excellent. She is
exceptionally happy at the growing fame. So am I! But I like you wearing the
polar bear; it is better than the Viking's Micky Mouse and means you are my brand.

15 September 1958

Dearest Fido:

I did not write over the weekend, having absented myself from the office -- unusually. The truth is I knew newly-arrived graduate students and undergraduates would bang at my door, and I could at least get some reading done at the shore. The air is crisp and Septemberish; it was too good to miss. Saturday morning we waited, profitlessly for an electrician who promised to come to fix a ceiling bracket in the morning; and then in the afternoon Susan and I went to a piece of land she inherited inland to see if there were gentians and if the wild cranberries were ripe. Alas, we found no fringed gentians, only bottled ones in scattered corners; and the cranberries were almost non-existent because of last year's drought. So I fear there will be no cranberry jelly to delight you when you come; although Susan has made jelly out of beach plums which is a delight to taste.

I think all of the pictures are now in --15 rolls altogether--and I made a preliminary selection from them and showed them to some of the family Saturday night, and again to little Susan and Jim last night after their return from New York. I do wish we did not have to wait so long for me to show them to you. There are hundred or more which will do very nicely, although of course a number are chiefly interesting to us. Alas, the one roll of ektochrome which I bought at the store in Godthaab I rather underexposed; but by compensating good luck it contained the least vital pictures. I hardly know where to begin picking out a selection for you, and probably you should do this for yourself.

I enclose reviews of *Gate* from the *Sunday Tribune* and the *Times*. One could hardly ask for more enthusiasm, and you must promise to let Hilda see them. I was interested to see that Horace calls it your best. I myself have given up trying to assess them; they are all a little too close to me. Not so close as to you of course, but still I feel a little as though I had sheltered the books under my wing until they were hatched.

The first days of the term are naturally filled with students, and yesterday we had to put in an appearance at the President's house for his tea for freshmen. I should much have preferred spending the time trying to think what under the sun (or moon) I shall say to them tomorrow night for a half hour on the radio. The more I think I, for having said last spring that I would,

You write, "I mist Greenland very much." I find it mistier and mistier.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

16 September 1958

Dearest Fido,

Your undated letter of the 13th in this morning's mail. I had been eager to get your account of the visit to the consulate. Hilda's letter in yesterday, although of course written for me, and perhaps buttered, seemed very content and happy about it. I agree with you in thinking this was what she really wanted: the resolution of a chord. But I do think the two of us handled it well, and in the only possible way: you egging a little, I demurring ostensibly but actually pushing ahead and smoothing the path. I think the letters from the Washington lawyers not only helped with the consulate but with her. She asks me to write Mr Nelson, and I shall. I am, like yourself, immensely happy, and the future seems a little easier because of this cushion. Altogether it becomes a red-letter summer: what with Greenland and Susan's and my visit to Denmark (I can't tell you how the trip soothed her spirits--it had a good deal to do not only with relieving the pressures of last winter but also in our doing something together: all of my trips abroad since our marriage (17 years now) having been made alone, and one is a little cheated out of a sense of sharing.), and now so importantly Hilda's repatriation. But do not send this letter to Hilda, to whom I wrote last night, for I do not want her even in retrospect to feel how carefully planned the campaign was. I do have one further question from you, however, and that is whether you think it would be wise for me to get a letter from the Washington lawyers on the matter of her income tax for 1958: at precisely what date her liability to the U.S.A. government begins (whether date of oath or date of acceptance by the State Department, etc.) Philip should be warned so that he can be similarly prepared. He can also look into the matter of how the British should be advised of her step.

The Isobel Hutchinson arrived in this morning's mail. Thank you'.

I checked into the Airkaldy affair, and found that I did not have copies of her letters from D.R., and so could not have checked contents as from this end. It doesn't matter of course, since you bought the originals, but I wanted you to know. Actually Mrs Odle stopped sending the copies after the first few batches, or at least I have not received them from you. I had a letter from another friend of D.R.'s, referred to me by Mrs O., saying that she had sixty letters from D.R. which she wondered if I was interested in. I wrote saying that it was impossible when I did not know dates or contents, but offered her fifty dollars for them, explaining

(now 20th September: which is the way things go!)

that this was at the rate another

group had been offered by a dealer, and that she would getting more than the other owner got from the dealer. My hunch was that this ought to be a good group since Mrs Odle had suggested it, but I can suggest to the latter that if she does this in the future, it would be helpful if she wrote me and gave some idea of the relationship to D.R. and the type of material one could expect in the letters.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

I do myself think that any ms letters one buys are apt to be worthwhile for D.R.'s memory. We can discuss this when you come over.

Since I began the letter the Kirkaldy letters have arrived, but I have not had a chance to read them yet. They were carefully saved in envelopes and so are in excellent condition.

A letter from the Washington lawyer who did the work on Hilda's case has come. "I talked to the State Department," he said in answer to my message that the application had been filed. "They are glad to be alerted, promised to watch for the application and agreed to call me when it arrived. This is a concession I had not expected. Apparently now I will know immediately when the recognition (of her citizenship) becomes official. I shall call you, of course." This I thought was very nice indeed; I think the lawyer rather enjoyed followed up Pound with Hilda. Let me know about whether to have him look into the matter of her taxation for this year.

Thought you might be amused at the enclosed advertisement of an "American" Swiss Army Knife. I am a little vague as to whether superior American steel means the best which can be gotten here, or superior to the Swiss. I needn't say I am happy to have the real thing, however, and treasure it against next summer and the East Coast.

Have seen no more reviews of the *Gate*, but am not likely to unless in the weekly magazines. However the success of your books has raised the market value of the earlier ones, if the enclosed quotation from Rota is any indication.

There is an announcement of a new book of stories by Karen Blixen, to be published on October 13th. I will not send, since you will be here and may want to glance at it before we send on to Hilda. Also announcement of a new Disney nature film you will want to see in N.Y. (not to be confused with Mickey Mouse). It is called "White Wilderness" and is a documentary on animal and bird life in the Arctic.

I hope Kenwin was in shape again before your horde of visitors arrived. The experience must have been ghastly for Elsie, and I am glad she stood up well under it.

The plans for your visit sound fine. I suggest you take your two days to adjust, do Prutting, and then leave for the *Hotsons* on Thursday or Friday and return Monday. But also suggest you come for overnight to New Haven, if possible, or we can run down to see you with Arctic geer. I lend you my Hudson Bay parka, Shetland sweater, and sleeping bag, also warm shirts. Be sensible and bring nothing more for trip than one woolen undergarment, trousers, and an extra pair of shoes unless you want to buy another pair of rubber shoes here to have as guard against the future. This might be sensible, and I could ship over next summer with my geer. That is, an absolute minimum. You will not have to call on the Governor of Maine or sit at the captain's table at Sorrento. Be sensible, I repeat!

I'd love to read Rosemary's book, so that I can know her a little. Do send

it along. Will try & get you copy of *Bruni's* *Dr. Jax*. All love, Kevon.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

24 September 1958

Dearest Fido,

Still rather hectic, or at least confused, at my desk and I know
how you feel about freedom to work. How one longs for it! I have my afternoon
seminar to prepare, but do want to begin a letter to you, so that I can file
away the last two or so from you. I forget, alas, what I have answered and
what not.

You will probably have talked to Hilda on the phone, and she will
have told you about Portay's award to her of the Harriet Monroe Prize for last
year. So far as I am concerned it is their most important one because of the
significance of the name in regard to them. It pleases me too because it had
nothing to do with her repatriation, and thus will not seem to be a reward for
it.

You speak of Horse's review and his choice of *Gate* as the best.
I suspect he, like Bruun, admires its compact economy; and it is a little jewel.
As to the others? Both Susans and Lizzie like *October* best, I think. As a novel,
*Kroman Wall* seems to me to combine the best of your manners with the greatest
depth and the strongest story line. *The Player's Boy* has your very finest
writing in it, but will never be popular with readers or critics because of the
absence (except by implication) of the bridge between the two strongly contrasted
parts. The middle, which connects the boy and the man, is clear in your mind;
to others it seems like two different people, or at best related rather than
single. And although I know you like the ending it will always seem abrupt to
most.

Wish I had said to the freshmen what you suggest: I took as topic
my reading of all summer newspapers at one time, one's impression of the world,
the matter of being in or out of it (as our w/t operator said of living in Green-
land), and finally the responsibility of the intellectual.

I liked Agnes Latham's article. She writes very well indeed, and in
a easy way shows a familiarity with the problems both of history and criticism.
She is obviously first rate, but then I knew this before.

A note as to Hotson, and I will check the best way of getting to
me with them. The weekend of the 25th would be excellent for you to go,
since (alas) the annual American Studies meeting is being held in Northampton,
Massachusetts, and I simply have to be there for professional reasons. I will
get football tickets for the following week, the game with Dartmouth--always a
good one. Do you think Islay and Kenneth could be persuaded to go? I should
know as soon as possible, since October 16th is the closing date for application
for tickets.

Glad that Aldington blessed the repatriation. One is tempted to be
a little sarcastic, but I am too relieved to learn that he changed his pace.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

Don't worry about the bookshelf space. We will work it out one way or another, and if I need extra shelves I will charge the account.

Glad you are trying your hand at dictation on the second part of Artemis. It is worth the effort, and, as you say, it does give one the outline which can be re-written.

(27 September--the old story):

Two more letters in since I had to leave my typewriter, and I was particularly upset to hear the news of Helen. How dreadful for me, and it confirms to me my suspicions that she has been walking a tight rope of anxiety. You do not say exactly what Kurt's trouble is, and one can only guess at cancers like leukemia or worse. In any event it will make the future very dark indeed. One is at least glad that Pantheon has several current successes: both the Pasternak and the Renault are on the best selling list and will, I hope, show to the directors where the real strength of the firm has lain: in the Wolffs.

Your visit with Sir Kevin at least was on the lighter side, however exhausting to experience; and your account caught just the right tone of breathless rush. Apparently he is an example of that wonderful breed of miscellanea-collectors, who amongst much rubbish do turn up precisely the things to set one's own mind going or fill the missing links.

I enclose Prescott's review, since you will be curious to know what he said. But *Gate* does not have to be a book for every taste, and Prescott will still be loyal.

I wrote again to Eastman House about the print of *Borderline*, and the Director replies that at long long last the print will be shipped off to me on Monday. When you are in New Haven we will arrange to have it run off on a decent projector, and if you think that Islay or Kenneth (or Perdita and John) would like to see it too, we can make a little "do" of it.

A nice letter came in yesterday from Brother Volant, thanking for cards and news of Greenland, but I shall save this along with the rest of his correspondence for you to read when you come.

The savings account received a nice little gift by a check from Pantheon for $3,263.05 in payment of my account with them as of the end of April. Nearly 3,000 is for the return on the Gandharan, on which as you know we receive 60% of the net sales back. $11.71 is for the Freud, and I shall have to pay Islay his "royalty" on the art book; but the results are still comforting. As to Islay I think I will wait until he comes to give him his check, so that he will have a little extra to spend here if he wishes to.

At long last too, my *Poets* has broken even (thanks to the paperback edition) and I received a royalty check of $171.15, my first since it appeared ten years ago. I won't get rich this way, but it is at least soothing.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

6 October 1958

Dearest Fido:

The quickest of replies, since the weekend left me no time to write, and today there is only a quarter-hour left before I must go home to dress for the symphony. But there are two letters I have not answered, and I must at least indicate. (Do forgive this typewriter; I think now it is really on its last legs. The repair man flung up his hands in horror, apparently, while I was gone. "Nothing can be done to an antique like that!" he exclaimed.)

Your analysis of Prescott's reaction was like a knife to the heart of the matter. Of course you are right. I love thinking of Jean Starr as a model for Harmonia! Anyhow, I am sure it is what she would like to be. Adrienne of course is quite right about a certain type of novel taking the place of, or running over into, the novel. It has to do with the diction, when the quality of things is stressed in the novel, when one operates in the novel with feeling rather than with reason. At least this is what I have been teaching for many years now.

I don't know what to say about your coming over. Naturally I should miss your not coming, but then I have been with you for such a happy period during the summer, that I would get as much if you were to wait and come over in mid-winter; and I know what you mean about wanting to get on with your book. You will not be able to touch it until mid-January if you come now. We shouldn't fool ourselves to the contrary. Certainly Mary will understand; certainly the Wolves will; certainly I will. I can see the boys, and since the print of Borderline arrived this past Monday I can get them or Islay up to see it anyway. I want you whenever you can come. From your point of view maybe it would be better in late winter or spring.

I had a sad telephone call from Horace Saturday night. Marya had had so severe an internal hemorrhage the previous Sunday, with such loss of blood that her heart stopped beating. They had rushed her to the Harkness Pavilion of Presbyterran Hospital in New York (where they have a friend on the staff) and were still waiting to see whether they could operate or what could be done. A apparently they had only just come back from England when it happened. He promised to let me know when the situation became a little clearer, and I will call myself in a day or two. This will be quite a blow, and perhaps a little later I ought to send him a check for a thousand from the account, because of the expenses. However at the moment they probably have health insurance; it will be a little later that this burden will be heavier.

He had had a copy of the Ovid sent me, and I was delighted to see he had dedicated it to you.

Will try to add to all this in a day or two. Life somewhat complicated at the moment by the arrival of a professor from Canberra who wants to know all about American Studies. Has brought his wife, and so we

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

12 October 1958

Dearest Fido,

Sorry not to have written during the week, but judge you have been busy too, since no letters from you in the past few days. Alas, in addition to innumerable committee meetings (why does one no sooner begin a year than he is forced to make plans for the following one, academically?), I have had rather a wretched cold. Not catastrophic but enough to take the energy out of one, and Monday night we left the symphony halfway through, since I was mostly asleep. However coriciden has helped, thanks to the example you gave me this summer.

I still wonder of course whether your plans are fixed by now to come or not to come, although I sympathize more and more with your anxiety to begin the revision and extension of the memoirs before next February. Do believe me when I say how completely I understand, and that a spring trip might well be more effective on every score.

Susan and I drove to Gardner yesterday to see my mother. A beautiful fall day, with the foliage quite brilliant especially as we got into the hills of central Massachusetts. She is really increasingly weak, and apparently has a severe pain in her side which troubles her although she tries not to show it. But I gather the doctors, who have examined her, cannot find anything wrong except her age, and feel that it would be foolish to do any exploratory operation or feed her sedatives which would only numb her mind as well. But she was delighted to see us, and had my brother and his wife also for lunch, and did not doze at all while we were there. She was immensely pleased with the Gats, and since when she lay on the couch she was covered with one of your Heimatswerk shawls, you were much a topic of her conversation. It was the first time I had seen her since my return.

I was much surprised Wednesday evening when a telephone call from the Eastman Museum in Rochester asked for permission to send at once by plane to Brussels a print of Borderline for a festival of film which the Belgium government is putting on for the Exposition. The ten greatest of all times, plus six (as I gathered) "great unknowns". Each important collection was asked to contribute one to the latter, and Rochester chose Borderline. I had to make an immediate decision, and so agreed. I only hope Kenneth will not be furious at me. I have written him of course. My own print of the film has come, and I will show to Islay, and then to you whenever you are next here.

The letters (59) from D.R. to the Austens came. I had not realized from Mrs Austen's letter (simply signed with her own name) that her husband was John Austen the artist and illustrator. Apparently D.R. was very fond of them, and the letters were most interesting and personal. Because the recipient was an artist, and apparently Mrs A is hard up, I raised the ante to $100.00.

Barquess Blixen's book reviewed today, and very favorably. Since you may not come, shall I send? To you or to Hilda? By the way I read the

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

second Mrs O'Neill's life of her husband. She herself apparently wrote
pulp fiction once, and it shows; but there is still the ring of truth to
most of it (the account of his first marriage is all wrong, but done out
of kindness I gather since Mrs Pitt-Smith is still alive), and it makes an
amazing picture of the early Greenwich Village Days. I borrowed my copy to
read, but can get and send if the picture of the times interests you.

The new jacket for Hilda's Selected Poems has come (they certainly
waited to get it out, and I had to prod them on my return). I rather think
I like it better than the first printing. A copy has been sent to Hilda, and
you will see it there.

Susan has now finished her presidency of the Connecticut Garden Clubs,
although still busy with the various duties of a prominent member. But she
hopes for more free time this winter.

Last night we started going over the Greenland pictures again, for
resorting and discarding. If you don't come would you like a set of 25-30
to show in England, or shall I wait and send as Christmas present?

Busy at the office this Sunday morning correcting undergraduate
papers. I am rather out of practise, and would much prefer taking snapshots
of icebergs.

All love as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

13 October 1958

Dearest Fido,

Fortunately, perhaps, I forgot yesterday's letter on my desk
instead of mailing it when I went home; and yours of the 6th in this morning's
mail (how slow the posts are becoming now that summer is over) tells me that
you will be in Kusnecht as of the 14th, while you make up your mind about
coming over. Sometimes I think my verbal efforts to let you know that I will
understand if you don't come may appear to you as advice not to come. But
on the other hand you ought to know me well enough, and my feelings, not
really to be confused on that score.

As to the Beekman, however, our verbal communications on that
score while I was with you in Zurich must really have been confused; for I
thought we agreed that there was no reason why you shouldn't go to the Beekman
and profit from its convenience. My suggestion of the Stanhope was only as
an alternative, or to sample for Hilda, and if John should think you ought not
to go to the Beekman and offer another hotel as a substitute. I actually
don't know much about the Buckingham, but the boys will be able to give you
a report on it. Obviously you don't particularly want to stay there while they
are residents. Or at least I assume so. Ergo, the Beekman by all means.
HELL! now on re-reading the letter I see that you think they are not keen.
So why not in any event stay with them the four nights, and meanwhile arrange
either for the Beekman or the Stanhope, as it may develop. However of course
I still wait for news as to whether or not you come. My hunch is you will.

Thanks for thinking about the drinks as of Shannon, but we shall
survive. And if you bring Swiss goodies, take them to the Schaffners. A box
of liqueur chocholates always will be welcomed, I imagine by them. We are
happy with the memory of a box I brought back, and so do not need anything
except the pleasure of your company.

I approve of Bancy's overhaul, if for no other reason than that
it is always a good idea in business to go over the records, discard or fill
in what is necessary. That they have a specialist on such matters is all to their
credit.

All love,
Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

by which you can hold on to that which the present England no longer
represents but which your childhood had as atmosphere. I don't mean
everything in one's childhood of course: but the father image of loving
strength and strength in what seemed to be an ordered world. I suspect
too that this is one reason why the second part of *Artemis* doesn't quite
jell at the moment; but perhaps it will in time. Meanwhile it is exciting
to think that you have this new burst of creative energy, and I can well
believe that the revival of French imperialism with a new feeling for
rhetoric (in the best sense of the word) may well be the medium for it.

I only hope that when Lowndes is taken care of, that you can manage
to spend a week or ten days on the Scillies, or at least in Cornwall with
your group of friends there. It would mean an immense amount to Doris
I know. By the way I only suddenly realized that Bryanston (where her
grandsons go) is the same school where my three Trevelyen nephews are. I
wonder if they know each other.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

Is it because I don't talk about it? After all I have to live in it; that
is an art in itself. After all I have to help other people to live in it;
that is another art form. One might even call it "experimental", you know;
for he who yells the loudest is not always the free-est. Nor is he who
escapes from it by doing nothing, always the one to build a French
Empire. Fortunately, you yourself do not fall victim to these ambiguities
in yourself; but don't be fooled by the externals of others.

Thought you might be amused by Robert Frost's views on Pound's
efforts to make it new, as he expressed them from the Library of Congress
where he is now Poet in Residence: "He said that Ezra Pound, the poet
whom he helped to get released from a mental hospital here, had written
some fine verse, both rhymed and free, as a young man. 'But the Cantos,
those lengthy things,' said Mr. Frost, 'I don't say I'm not up to them, I
say they're not up to me. Nobody ought to like them, but some do, and I
let them. That's my tolerance.'"

Crisp weather here, but the leaves begin to fall, and there are
frosts in the air. (I started to erase that, to remove the pun, but decided
it was better to let it stand.

Do give Rita, George, Doris, and the others my best.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 October 1958

Dearest Fido:

No mail from you for several days --by which I have proof if I needed it of how busy your time must have been. In the third of the three letters in today's mail, however, you spoke obliquely about the three extra months for Lowndes. You had not mentioned this earlier, but I gather there is some chance that you do not give up the flat so early as you had thought. By which I gather also that there is still a chance you might flip over while the boys are still here, and this is of course very good news indeed. I wrote Islay a note as of his arrival, with a statement about royalties from the 

Hope you will have heard some news from Collins about Artemis before you left London. Do I take it you have now rewritten the ending, or that you still plan to. I suspect the latter. In any event I will say nothing to the Wolves until I hear from you and you have made your arrangements with Collins or your new publisher. Better not to confuse them by still possible shifts. Or if you do come over then your future relationship to your work can be talked over directly. It will be hard anyhow to talk about finding a new publisher until you have the editor-type of manuscript actually finished. One may be surprised by their liking it, and I am sure they can be persuaded to offer no comment or suggestion

I was interested to learn that Sylvia had flown out, but doubt that I will try to see her unless you are along. There would not really be very much to talk over with her, and nothing I could do for her at this particular time at least. However, on second thought, I do owe her a note of thanks for a French translation of Pound; and must in any event drop her at note to say so.

Sorry about 

Sorry too about the American consul's debacle. They must have been very stupid. One wishes that an English journalist would gather up the specific details of these refusals. I only hope it is nothing worse than Americans becoming punch drunk as a result of the general animosity against them. Montgomery certainly handed it out in London, and I should think would be roundly cheered both in England and on the Continent. Although perhaps not everyone abroad will agree with his assessment of his own vital ideas and campaigns after the landings in France. Churchill certainly didn't at that time; although he may think differently now. But I do think Montgomery has his finger on the pulse of the times, and who knows but that he may be called out of retirement to head the new bulldog spirit.

The Serge and Shute are both here, for which many thanks. I look forward to the schoolteacher in the arctic, which should be fun.

Be sure to let me know how long you will be at Kenwin.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

23 October 1958

Dearest Fido:

I wrote yesterday, but another letter from you arrived this morning, and at the same time one of the yellow packets to fill out the picture. Your own letter explained for the first time the possibility of extending the lease on Lowndes, which does seem like a reasonable plan -- at least so long as it does not continue indefinitely to bind you down by the apartment.

As to the yellow packet (the morning's mail from the world):
I was relieved to have a little more information about Kurt, especially be-
fore I see them. It does help one in the social amenities of such a situa-
tion. Do you feel you could tell me a little more specifically what the
diagnosis is? But not of course if you are pledged otherwise. The letter
from Aurelia was more detailed than mine, but mine was just as enthusiastic
about Gate. I suppose it is really inevitable that at 88 "Rafe" should be
declining. However, I do not think we need to increase the amount at Christmas:
one can wait until there are the inevitable sudden expenses, and move in then.
I feel confident she will let me know. The letter from Monica R. seemed much
happier than before. I really do suspect that the climate of Denmark is not
good for her, but she is sensible enough to realize that it is better to stick
it out. I presume, too, that in her husband's position it would be regarded
as disloyal if she went to the States, or that he might feel he must accompany
her. I have not yet sent out the various books etc which were promised, but
am mailing a copy of Gate to her. She expected it, and I promised to. George's
letter was interesting in explanation of Penay's plans for the consolidation of
your records. Very sensible, it is what banks everywhere are now doing. I
was particularly interested in Margery Hicks' letter with its remarks about
the de Havilland and Hatfield. I wonder if she was stationed there while I was
at St Albans, and if I ever saw her at the Comet as roadhouse subsidised by
the factory and at its edge. I knew Geoffrey De Havilland quite well, since his
ex-wife was my driver. Geoffrey was one of the few men ever to die with com-
plete appropriateness when his plane burst over the marshes in the first breaking
of the sound barrier by man. "It simply disappeared into the air, and not a
murder trace was found." "It was one of those men who amazed one by his sheer
skill. Whenever we looked up and saw a mosquito being tested in a science fiction
manner we breathed deep with amazement at the triumph of the plane and knew it
was "geoffrey." Later in the afternoons we would see him at the Comet and confirm
it. Yet he drank like a demon without any apparent effect. Angels presumably
have effortless coordination, and if so then "geoffrey was an angel."

As to your letter, one or two things ought to be remembered. First,
that I rejoice in the fact that you are feeling the impetus for a new strain
and a new theme. This is what ought to happen at particular points to any
serious artist --and you have always been that! The particular strain of change
will work itself out. The need for it was felt by you when you spoke of wanting
to be contemporary in the manner of Beowulf, which in the end may well be one
of your finest and most lasting work. What I dislike is your feeling of need
in denigrating what so many of your friends and the public have liked, and what
has been a fine achievement. Of course it has! It is not taffy or spun sugar,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

2 November 1958

Dearest Fido:

A grey Sunday morning, with the rather bleak prospect of having to take a pair of tourists out in it, for an hour, while they "see" Yale. It's one of these situations where a friend asks the favor because "you can do it so well." Later this afternoon we have to give a party for 32 at the house, so that executive committee of American Studies can meet the staff, and vice versa. I shall be glad when the day is over, and weep for the things I might otherwise have gotten done.

I hope you approve of the shift in typewriters. My secretary forced me to it. "No one," she said, "can read these letters!" But it was not simply a matter of the ribbon. Actually, the keys were so worn (after 26 years) that they made no suitable impression; and the model was so old that a new keyboard could not be put in. What I have done is to bring back from the library the portable I had there, and put the Arctic one in its place until I need it to take with me anywhere again. Meanwhile my fingers are shy, but the stiffness will wear away in time. Meanwhile you must be patient.

I realize that I never did answer your question about the Stokes Sanitarium in Lenox, which Heydt had suggested for Hilda. It is the one classical Freddian sanitarium, and we had thought about it for Lizzie. Unfortunately in her case, the doctor inquired but they would not accept her because of her particular problems and outlets. They have a number of small cottages and give pretty complete freedom during treatment, and the location in the country must be superb for Lenox is one of the loveliest mountain resorts in southern New England. But I think the location would present a good many difficulties for Hilda, since it is designed for those who like to make long walks, on rather hilly terrain once one gets off the immediate bounds. Whether there would be the kind of social life she likes, and finds at Kusnacht, I don't know. Certainly there would be nothing like the inn to walk to if her health improves enough, since Lenox is at some considerable distance. Also Lenox must be eighty to a hundred miles from here, and of course much farther from New York, so that any visits to her would require at least a full day if not an overnight visit. This could be done, but is not particularly in favor of the spot especially if she craved visitors.

Susan has read Rosemary Outcliffe's book and liked it very much indeed, as she did the Shute. I hope to get to both soon. By the way I noticed that something called Souvenir Press had published a book called North of the Desolate Sea, by Liv Balstad. "The enthralling story of a woman's nine years in the Arctic." Do you know of this, and is it worth getting? I have no idea. The ad was in the TLS.

9 November 1958

Dearest Fido:

Such a mass of envelopes and packages were waiting for me when I returned from my two-day trip to Boston and Andover (for the Alumni Council meeting)! I spent most of last night going through them, enjoying the various sets of photographs, Perdita's stories, etc. Four packages (no five) from Maggs have also come. Four of them filled with the additions to the shelves for children's books, and then one group with the three Sitwell items. Thanks too for the 1959 diary, which arrived like Time's winged chariot drawing near. The two copies of *Paris 1900* I will take home to add to the shelf of duplicates, as I will with the three copies of *Arrow Music*. Unfortunately, because of the thin paper envelope, a corner of one of the latter was badly bent. I suspect it will straighten out in time, however.

My Boston trip, planned to see the executor of the estate of Bill Benet's widow (at his request) turned out to have a different angle from what I had expected. The business was confined to a little memorial he is planning for her, but more interesting to me was the fact that he was Danish consul in Boston (his name is von Rosenvinge, Danish by extraction) and had spent four years off the Greenland coast and in at the various settlements on east and west during the war, and had just been back the summer before we went for a tour with deKaufmann the Danish ambassador to the U.S. He had two Greenland paintings in his office, and was a very loquacious and entertaining young man. He took me for lunch to the Parker House, where I could not resist a meal of cod's tongues and cheeks. Very delicious, and I could not help but think of your teaching me how to pick out trout cheeks at Zurich.

Your Miss Hulbert sounds completely fascinating, and something that will fit into one of your Manchester Beowulf type of writing if you should ever want to go back to it as an interlude. It must be rather polter-geisterlich to have the past suddenly brought before one. I should not worry about Martita in the past; she will remember you in the present, which is much more important. Actually don't you imagine that Martita, embryonic actress, was much more outgoing and articulate as a child. You, I imagine, outside of your very serious intellectual talks with a teacher would have been rather frightened of ordinary social intercourse. At least it would have seemed so to them.

The news of Heydt's plans rather startled me to say the least. After your letter came I had a note from our Hilda telling me the same. I have a hunch, but you will know these things better than I, that marriage might make it (a) easier for him to stay on or return to Switzerland if he wanted to, and (b) would prove to

Incidentally I noticed that one can send for 22.50 a film week by Rasmussen in 1939 of life in the Antarctic section of the East Coast. The last Alaska Expedition - it runs 70 minutes, we might say - is for a private showing if you come over next summer, or while you do.

be a kind of protective buffer in various ways and under various circumstances against the Joans and the Melittas (perhaps against especially the Melitta) of the world. For she does have her eyes on him as escort if not anything else, and would have a tendency to be a little over possessive. As a married man he is freer to do what he wants to do. It is difficult to know what the effect on Hilda will be, but I should not discuss it too much with her; certainly not press any discussion. There is no reason why in the end it might not turn out very well indeed. It will be harder at first on Joan, in view of transferences etc., but in the end may be a saving.

You ask after Lizzie. She seems to be in one of those states of statis where nothing much happens in any direction. She does not want to see either her mother or me, and at the moment I gather that it is I rather than her mother who carries the burden of guilt that anyone in a state of nervous insecurity tries, believing it, to thrust on others. However she sees her sister pretty regularly, and had dinner last week with her grandmother, and has a good social presence on such occasions. She plans to go to the family Thanksgiving dinner at her grandmother's, despite the fact that we will be there; and it is a little difficult for us to have her ignore us in a group of eighteen, with only one living room and one dining room. I imagine she finds a certain satisfaction and sense of proper punishment in this, as she did at The Fourth of July. In the hospital she has alienated a good many of the other patients, and keeps very aloof and superior, with a good deal of criticism of the staff for not allowing her free privileges. So one can report no progress, although they feel on a very few occasions that they may have been able to penetrate her shell. Actually I think it will require another break-down within the hospital before she finally relaxes so she can be helped. Meanwhile Susan and I each go for an hour's indirect therapy, she on Thursday and I on Friday, to the Clinic too. It is all a good deal exhausting, but one's attention is often diverted.

We have dinner Wednesday night with Salomonson, the Danish expert on Arctic birds, especially on Greeland. He was the one who wrote the Arctic Year with Freuchen, which you did not like. Incidentally they have just translated Freuchen's biography of Kurt Rasmussen into English, but I imagine it doesn't say much that Rasmussen did not himself tell in his own autobiography.

Edith's anthology has just been published, with great splash, by the Atlantic Monthly Press. You will see the ads in your copy of the N.Y. Times when it reaches you. The product of many years work, they say, and I imagine it will make very interesting reading. The cost is $12.50, prohibitive for many but certainly not for all. I imagine she will send you a copy, so I will not.

All love,
Norman

16 November 1958

My dear Fido:

It is wonderfully good news that you may be, I hope are, coming to the States for a brief flip. Things have been so piled up until now that this later date probably works out better than the earlier one would have. We must work out plans, so let me know when your arrangements are definitive. I have to go to Pittsburgh by train on the night of Thursday the 27th, in order to give a talk at a national convention of teachers of English on the next afternoon, and have reservations to fly back from Pittsburgh on Saturday morning. The plane comes in to Newark about one-something and I was to have flown on to New Haven from there after an hour. But presumably I could cancel the last part of the trip by air, and come in to New York instead so that we could come up to New Haven Saturday afternoon and have Sunday together or as long as you want. If for example, Pup and Islay wanted to drive up on Monday I could have a showing of *Borderline* on that day, and you could go back with them if you felt you had to get at your innoculations etc. That would give us a good arctic period to show you the pictures from Hudson Bay and Greenland; and we could get together later in the week in New York, depending on how long you and the boys plan to stay. Perhaps under these circumstances you might want to stay Friday night with Pup before coming to New Haven, and get the first dose of visiting pills over with. I'm sorry about Pittsburgh but that was settled some time before. I also have a speaking engagement on the evening of December 5th, but so far nothing else scheduled for that week!

It doesn't look very promising so far as going to Washington this time, unless you were to stay for the following week as well. All museums there are closed as of Saturday afternoon.

You ask about the new machine. It is not really a new one, but an Underwood I bought second hand five or six years ago to use in my library office. I seldom am able to go there however, and so left the traveling one there and took this back to the Hall of Graduate Studies. It works all right, I think, and is certainly sturdy. I am reluctant to get an electric one for two reasons: the first, that my office is on direct rather than alternating current so that I would need a transformer; the second, that people tell me if I get use to the lightning touch of an electric I can never shift back easily to the other. I am too unskilled as a typist to add this burden to my poverty of skill.

I'm glad you liked the Hawthorne article. God knows I wish I could be free enough to write. I always have wanted to, and perhaps one day will. But too much in life has interfered, and I

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

have had life thrust on me in such a fashion that for three or four
years at the very least I still cannot. Then one can only guess
what lies behind the curtain that surrounds my crystal bowl.

This seems to be Dame Edith's week, what with her new anthology
published, and a long article by her, with a full page picture, in
the *Saturday Evening Post*. My secretary brought me the latter, thinking
you might be amused, and we are saving it until you come. This is
a record of some sort. The Sunday *Times* had a mixed review of the
anthology by David Daiches who both liked its stimulus and was
confused by its claim to be balanced. Apparently, and no reason why
not, it is a highly personal selection on the order of what Yeats
did for the Oxford Book of Modern Poetry. I do hope it will go well.

Wednesday night's time with Finn Salomonsen was most interesting. I went to his professional lecture in the afternoon on protective mutations of animals and birds in the arctic regions, but found it a little above my beak. However dinner was pleasant, and the RPLEYS brought him to our house afterwards and we had a long talk about Greenland and what he is doing. He goes out each three years and does another 100 miles of the west coastline, visiting and describing each bird rookery. The next trip is to the Frederikshaab area, and he was interested in our reaction and visit to the rookery in Kwanofjord. A much younger man than I expected, unmarried and possibly a little ambi, or perhaps he is a Jovelike eagle himself.

Last week, being budget time for next year, and no one able
to do any figuring until awards of fellowships to the faculty had been
announced. But by a few nights hard labor I managed to get the
American Studies budget in.

Another letter from Helen who seems to be a little easier, al-
though I have not mentioned your visit. Nor have I mentioned the new
manuscript you have for her, although I feel sure that both she and
Kurt will be interested in it. I would think however that it might be
well to give them only the finished manuscript lest they be tempted to
comment on it. The thing to do is to send it directly to them and who
ever you chose for your English publisher when it is completed.

Be sure to keep me in touch with your plans for the flight as
they develop.

All love,
Norman

22 November 1958

Dearest Fido:

It is wonderful to think you are actually coming.
Your letter of the 18th arrived yesterday afternoon, but I could
not answer it immediately since the afternoon (after getting back
as usual at 3 from the Psychiatric Institute) was filled with
before-the-weekend appointments. In any event there was not really
time to risk writing Kenwin since you planned to be at Kusnacht as
from the 24th.

My only regret, as you know, is that I had so long ago
accepted the engagement to speak at Pittsburgh just as you arrive.
And the midweek is pretty well taken up with classes etc., and the
following Friday the 5th we had accepted an invitation to a dance.
However, life being as complicated as it is, I had also accepted
an engagement on the night of the 5th to give a little illustrated
talk before the New Haven chapter of the Connecticut Archaelogical
Society on a topic which might conceivably interest you: "Some
Viking Remains in Greenland." I combine it with the dance, to a
dinner party before which Susan will go, and I join her at the dance
about ten. But we could have dinner together and go to the lecture
where you can jeer at my ignorance, if you wouldn't mind spending
after ten reading your Brunn novel etc. This would give us the
second important weekend before you go back. Just an idea; it
doesn't commit you and we can discuss after you arrive. But I mention
it so that you can have some ideas to talk over with Schaffners
before I see you. The best plan, all around, seems to be that I
come in to New York from Newark after my plane arrived early Saturday
afternoon (I should be at Pup's about 3, all going well with the
flying) and if I could see the boys there then it would be wonderful
for me. We could take a late afternoon train to New Haven, having
a late dinner in New Haven or eating on train as seems best. One
small complication is that Susan also long ago agreed to take the
small grandson from Friday until Sunday, since I was to be away and
she would be alone, in order to let little Susan and her husband go
to New York and be childless for a change. But he is a good child
and it won't make any difference to the three adults. I have
suggested to John that he drive up with Perdita and Islay (and Kenneth
is he wants to) on Monday, the 1st, so that we can have a private
showing of Borderline Monday afternoon, and they can drive you back
that evening. I am not telling the Hotsons you are coming, but we
can run out to see them on Sunday, or put them and the Hansens off
until the following weekend, as you prefer. Don't forget that I
will want time enough to bore you with an infinity of colored slides
from Hudson Bay and Greenland which you have not seen, and we have
the usual amount of business matters to go over.

All this somewhat tentative, but the best one can do under
the circumstances.

Was much interested, at a committee meeting Thursday after-
noon, when an American woman who has a sister living in Rome,
said that the sister reported to her that any American consular
employee who fraternized with the Italians was forthwith transferred
to another country, which rather bears out the reports you have
had. Needless to say she is as angry and frustrated as the rest
of us are.

No, Chapin is not working for John; it is another boy named
Hubert Creekmore.

I look forward to all your bulletins from Kusnacht. Give my
greetings to Joan, Heydt, and Mme Herf, etc.

All love,
Herman

27 November 1958

Dearest Fido,

WELCOME, WELCOME, WELCOME!

I tried to call Pup last evening to confirm plans for Saturday, but she was out. And today, as I sit at my office desk, I find that the Yale switchboard is shut down for Thanksgiving, so what little there is to add to the letter you should have received at Kusnacht I must write now. I am not quite sure what time the Pittsburgh plane arrives at Newark, but if Pup wants to inquire it is the Capitol Airline flight #582. I think it arrives about one o'clock, and I will take the bus into New York and then taxi to Perdita's. I should be there about three, or a little before. What would be wonderful for me would be the chance to see the boys, especially since John says that no one can come up on Monday to New Haven. Of course they may already have their plans, but if there should be any free time do have them save it for us. I will phone Susan from Perdita's to tell her whether to expect us for dinner that night or not. We could even eat on the train if that proved wisest.

I leave the time of your return to you, but hope that you will want to come up on the following Friday also for that weekend. Somehow we will have to work in a brief visit to the Hotsons and a chance for the Hansens to see you. I have not yet told the Hotsons you were coming, but you may have done so.

AS to Kurt and Helen I hope you will have been able to see them before we go to New Haven, for I know that both of them are most anxious to see you. You might even have lunch on Saturday with them.

Am much annoyed at fate, as they have just announced that they are locally beginning to give flu shots, and I had arranged to take them after Pittsburgh. Alas, the germs would not wait and I have been suffering from an intestinal flu for the last several days, which has made the writing of my poor part in the Pittsburgh meeting all the more difficult. I still have it, but hope that it will pretty much have disappeared before you get here.

Have written Hilda this morning, and urged that she use the excuse of trying the new santiarium at Lugano as an obvious reason for not going to the Heydt. I thought I could urge this better before your arrival than after, when it would seem more like a put-up job after our heads had been together.

The situation at Brunner's must be terrible for everyone. I shall be anxious to hear what Dr Brunner has to say. I am glad you were to have seen him.

I am not quite sure whether you intended bringing with you what you have done so far on Dikelia. But if you did I think by all means you should give it at once to Helen so that they can have the weekend in which to read it before you talk over its publication with them. I know I shall like it anyway, and would almost prefer to see it for the first time when it is in print.

Was much amused to learn that you had three anoraks from Dastiensen. It did seem to me that we had a lot of cloth, but we bought what we were told to buy. You can use one of yours instead of a pair of pyjamas, and if I get three also then I can do the same. We will really look like two cabin boys!

My love of course to Rup and her family, and to the honorary Greenlanders. And a rubbing of noses for yourself.

Norman

10 December 1958

Dearest Fido,

I was heartbroken this morning when I talked on the phone with Pup and learned that I would not be able to see Kenya and still take anything earlier than the eleven o'clock train, which does not arrive in New Haven until twelve-forty. If the next day were anything but a working day for me it might be a different matter, but Monday will be next to the last day of classes and there will be countless appointments to be met before the students leave. And, of course, I have that dreadful television program to prepare for both by my reading and by my resting; for I am like an actor in not being able to go on if it is a new part and I am too fatigued to throw myself into the show. But I know you will understand.

What a nice dinner it was with you and Kenneth, really the first time the three of us have been alone together. And it did make a lucky triangle! I always enjoy being with you -- which is a professorial understatement -- and I know that I would enjoy being with him. It was gay and fun.

The trip back was uneventful except for one moment when a conductor came hurriedly back through our car to ask for any doctor because a woman had glass in her. Then the train stopped, and eventually the doctor came back to our car. I asked no questions, but in New Haven took a physics professor home in my car, it being late for taxis, and he told me that the car ahead of him had been stoned by hoodlums, breaking a window but hurting no one; that he heard a boulder hit the metal on his car but no window; and that in the car behind him a window had been broken shattering glass over a TWA hostess on her way home after her flight. What an incredible thing! I may have forgotten to tell you that the insurance company will pay for the damage to my car, and that it is now fixed.

I thought you might be amused by the enclosed letter in yesterday's mail. The woman is certainly verbal.

All love as always,

NORMAN

HOLMES

PEARSON

233 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

14 December 1958

Dearest Fido:

I got to the office too late this morning to phone you, but will try tomorrow. Meanwhile I want to send on copies of the Greenland interview which rather unexpectedly appeared in this morning's paper. I thought you might like to give one to Hilda for herself. Not that she is that keen about icy mountains, but it occurred to me that she might like to show it to Heydt, to Joan and to Mme Herf. Incidentally if I forget to ask you by phone will you send me Joan's last name. No I can get it from Ethel's file. On the whole I thought the reporter did a good enough job, though five years of Viking settlement is obviously an error for five hundred.

I do so wish I could have come to New York as I had hoped and planned to do. But to have gotten back in New Haven only after one o'clock would have made me too tired for all that simply has to be done in preparation for the television shows. As I told you, the first two must be filmed this week. These are the ones on Pound and Eliot. The last two will be on Cummings and on Stevens. And turn your wheel for me, spin it as George would say! I am scared out of my wits.

My parka, which I am calling a Christmas gift from you, arrived Saturday and I have been wearing it since. It is very light, down-filled, and water repellent. It should be just the thing for the east coast! I do thank you, as for so much else that you have done for me and for us. My gratitude is as great as my love, and you must be sure of both. You say you are a Greenlander, and I a Dane. The truth is I am a Muslim, which is all-inclusive.

I am intrigued in reading the TLS where Shane Leslie, the old fool, has been writing about his memories of Scott Fitzgerald, to see him talk about Mons. Hemmick who taught at the Catholic School were Fitzgerald went. "As I write, I receive word from Mgr. Hemmick in Rome, formerly Fay's assistant at the Newman School, that he had destroyed all Fitzgerald's letters to himself." One ought to put Kenneth on the trail to clarify all this.

I talked with Kurt on the phone, and authorized a new printing of 1500 copies of *October*, which sells now at about 20 copies a month. There will be no money in it, but I think wise to keep as much as possible in print from this earlier period of your mature work. I thought he sounded a little subdued.

In writing Hilda I told her I had heard from Washington, and that she should get certified copies of her repatriation when she goes to the consulate. Or she may not have to, and you can

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

233 H G S

pick up the passport for her, along with the copy. I also urged her to do this before she went to Lugano. It seems safer this way, especially after my prodding of the Zurich office.

Entre-nous I have added to a note to Louise Bogan that Hilda is now an American citizen again, and will do the same to Babette Deutsch. Added to my Christmas greetings, that is. As you may know I had earlier been trying to get the National Institute to make her an honorary member, and they were about to do this last spring, but phoned me and I suggested putting it off until after my visit so that she might perhaps be a regular member. I hoped it might please her, and she certainly deserves the honor. If it works, this year or next, perhaps it might be an excuse to get her to come over for the ceremony, although this is not absolutely necessary and depends on how her health continues

I was delighted to know that Doris had gotten her divorce before Christmas. As I told you --our trip, Hilda's passport, and Doris' divorce make the year red-lettered.

I keep saying to myself how wonderful it was to have had
you here, but even this does not adequately represent my happiness.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

18 October 1959

Dearest Fido,

Have been spending the last three days going over the manuscript of Hilda's *Madrigal*. Susan left for Albuquerque on Friday, and I have been waiting for a period of time when I could work at it without interruption. There was really nothing to do to it. And what a fine piece of writing it is! I think you will find it impressive--I know you already know it--when you actually see it in print. The manuscript is due at the end of the month, and once I hear from Hilda in regard to one or two (I think five in all) minor queries, I can send it off. Then I hope we can go ahead with *Helen* as the following book, and after that perhaps either *The Gift* or her *End to Torment*.

Thank you for your valiant letter to her about the use of a pseudonym for *Madrigal*. You hit just the right notes, and I wish you could be sitting in Macmillan's stead.

A fine pile of yellow envelopes came in. The first I opened had nothing but my letters to Hilda in it, which hardly moved me to excitement. But the final one was my GRIEDER TIE and I end with the smile of a pussy cat. If I were sure of being an angel in heaven I should order my eternal robes in Grieder silk. You can continue to give them to me until death do us part; my only request is that I wear ten of them as I lie stretched out in my coffin. Then people will understand that I accomplished something, really, in my life simply by being the possessor of so many. I do thank you: many salaams. And though I do not properly belong in your seraglio, I hope the others who are there will not wish to change their sex simply to warrant so beautiful a cravat.

Delighted to have the postcards from Petsamo etc, which will be fitted into their proper places in the files. Curiously, and a little like yourself, I seem to have the feeling that I am tidying up, putting things in order---as though something would happen which might make it imperative to have everything as shipshape as possible. I certainly don't mean I have intimations of death, so don't worry about that. Perhaps it is little more than the knowledge that a certain period of my life is over. I am not sure what the next will be. Perhaps just the same, only a fresh reel.

All letters read with interest, and a few saved out for comment. (1) Don't know your motives in relaying Hilda's brother's fears of Florida; they have had rather rotten weather during a lot of the last two years, but even so the flowers are out etc.; and certainly not Washington for her. Perhaps for her brother who can walk through the snow and go the museums. I do not think, really, that Hilda is looking for a lot going on. This is not in the way of protest, only of comment. (2) A very pleasant letter indeed from Mrs Maggs. I have heard elsewhere that the boy is intelligent and interested. Naturally the stock will take on the personality of his interests, which may not be yours. But there is so little of real interest these days, that the juveniles will be enough for a while, once I can get the list ready. (3) Probably I ought to have known the name of the American you speak of, and whom Aldington advises to apply for a Guggenheim. Is this your Chester? (4) I wish Chester Page did not make me so uneasy! I can't believe that it is because I am jealous of him. But he does seem somehow awfully fake, and the fact that he hangs around Marianne doesn't really affect the case one way or the other. He reminds me of a man whose name escapes me but who hung around Edith for a long time and collected her books with little delicate inscriptions from her in them. and now they are in every book catalogue.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

Now of course Chester may be so deeply moved that all of this is little more than
a protestation of devotion, but I wish he could write more intelligently than to
ask such stupid questions as to whether your more recent and famous books all were
first printed in England. The hint naturally is for you to send them all, dutifully
inscribed as if for a charitable institution. Oh, I am being grossly unfair. Pay
no attention to me. If you want to, write him a note saying that you sent his letter
along to me to answer since I have been handling these things. (5) I continue to be
pleased at Doris's pleasure with her new house. The purchase seemed to act like a
catalyst. We will look forward to seeing her and her sister in the spring. (6) The
publishers wrote me a letter asking me to go down to the party for Sylvia. It is a
Tuesday night--symphony night here--and I rather hate to go so far for a cocktail party,
especially now that I don't drink, but I may go for her sake. I should like to see her
anyhow.

forgot to bring my engagement book along, but will write tomorrow about
the best time for you to flip over this fall if you can can. I rather think early
December is pretty clean, if that is not too late for you. Ypu might be able to pick
up a few Christmas nickknacks for your hareem.

Your have not commented on my query about turning over the Dorothy Richardson
books to the library now, so they will not be tempted or have to duplicate. One has
of course anyhow a set of Pilgrimage in my office, so that is always available.

Your analysis of Catha was masterly. I look forward to the greatest detail
apropos of Pat, after his visit. I hesitate to urge you to draw him out, because I
think just at this minute one cannot take on a patient for what would amount to
analysis. You have all the abilities, but one must conserve creative strength for your
writing. And for getting the hareem billing and cooing by a little pat here and there.

I seem suddenly to be in an absolute hell of engagements. Last Monday night
there was an American Studies graduate student club, the first of the year, to which I
naturally had to go. Tuesday night we had to drive into the country for a dinner given
in honor of a fuddy Oxford don--but able too--named Wrenn (The Owl and the Nightingale
man) who was my language tutor for a couple of months. Wednesday (when Susan came
down with a crashing attack of bursitis--she went off with her arm in a sling) I had
to make my appearance at a cocktail party for Iris Murdoch who is here to give a couple
of lectures. I read a novel of hers called The Bell. Thought it well written, but not
particularly interesting, and so perhaps had nothing to say to her. She is a philosophy
don at Oxford and rather looked the type: dutch cut hair, missing a few side teeth,
nice skinned, and terribly frightened. Everything I said was wrong. I fear I seemed too
masculine, which I do not mean as a compliment to myself. I suspect if I could have
sat on the side lines and listened and then come in at the right moment I might have
been all right. But for real rapport I should have been her student and in skirts, and
been eager but not too bright, so that she would try to help me, explaining things
very carefully to me, very patiently, and encourage me by extra little treats at tea,
and then one day just as I was leaving she would put her hand on my shoulder as a mark
of friendship, and I would look up at her and suddenly there would be a look of
terrifying understanding. AND THEN WE COULD TALK AND TALK AND TALK.

Thursday night I had to put on my dinner jacket, and go to a graduate
school party for Woodrow Wilson Fellows (I won't try to explain what they are) and then
to Trumbull College where they were dedicating a room in memory of a deceased member
of the faculty. For some reason I was asked to give the talk at the banquet in the

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

24 October 1959

Dearest Fido,

Absolutely pouring outside, and we had intended to go to a football game with Colgate, Yale being so far unscored against. This was to have been Mrs Pennett's game--she insisted on going, despite her bad knee and 83 years--and I had pulled wires with the Director Athletics to get tickets which would be easy for her to use. Now I suppose the least I can do is to sit and listen to the game over the radio, and see if anything can be done at short notice for next week's game.

Tomorrow we drive to Gardner. I have not yet gotten my brother on the phone to learn the present situation, but I presume things will not have changed much. I come back in late afternoon and then have to go to an evening meeting of students. The fall, with the opening of college, is almost as bad as the spring. In the fall everyone is having opening gate-togethers; in the spring they are having closing rarewells. Then there are all the matters of budgets etc. Nowenow I can't help feeling that if I am going to have to run a business I ought to be an a branch that really pays for doing it.

I will take a look at Argos, by Villiers. Have just bought, and received, from Canada, THE LAND OF DESOLATION, London, 1871, by Hays: a visit to Greenland. It will be here for you to see when you come. Or I can send if you need reading for a cold night. It is really not any more difficult than from the London Library.

Bought on spec from London, for four pounds, three letters written by De La Mare (whom I admire as a poet), because the listing said he mentioned H.D. It turned out not to be much, but intriguing and, I found, satisfying that Hilda had made an impression. He was writing to John Gawsworth in 1945. "I have just had a copy of a very unusual poem by H.D." He must have been referring to Tribute to Angels. The rest of the letters are good. Remember to ask me to show them when you come.

A new local rare book dealer (who, incidentally, now carries your books when he can get hold of them) sold me another volume of Denton Welch, to whose writing you introduced me. And has now offered the first typescript of Maiden Voyage, with inked corrections. Price was $340.00. I said no of course. But found it interesting that the final ms of the book is in the British Museum, and other drafts are at the University of Texas. I had not thought of Welch as being "collected."

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

The letter has been interrupted by having to go home for lunch, but it poured so hard that we did not go to the football game, listening to it instead by radio at Mrs Bennett's. Yale won 21-0 and so is still the only major team in the country not scored against. But there are many far better teams of course. This sort of thing always carries a little luck.

I have decided that I really ought to go into New York for Sylvia's party. The president of Harcourt wrote personally, and I think she would behurt if I didn't go. I rather hate to take the time, and, as you know, I don't drink, so I can't rub noses with John Barleycorn. Still if I can manage to get away a bit early, perhaps I can do an errand or two at the same time. And get an early train back, I hope. A class the next morning.

Have told my beeds that Mrs Van Johnson will reappear on your horizon. However even if she doesn't want it, she may tell others. The house does have its unique features, if just the right person comes along.

I did not read Bonner's new book, but Susan might take a look at it. Don't talk about taking chances. I picked up a copy of "Have Pen Will Travel" thinking it might amuse you as an example of what you avoid by staying abroad--this is thestory of an author on autographing tours, when they go to bookstores and inscribe copies "To Winifred Bryher with the best wishes of Harnett Kane." I tried to read it first while Susan was still away. But it was incredible. I did not have the heart to send on to you, and my Yankee heart weeps at the 3.50 which might have brought you amusement and now goes down the drain.

Susan came back with her arm much better, and she does not need to keep it in a sling. She will drive up with me tomorrow. I called my brother after I began this letter and my mother is apparently slipping a little continuously. She has her ups and downs, but the upse are never quite so high again, and the downs are deeper. Her mind was badly confused when he saw her yesterday, but that was probably because she was awake only ten minutes or so. Later the nurses told him she was better. It is sad to watch.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

1 November 1959

Dearest Fido:

I did warn you that this past week would be a full one for me, and leave little time for letter-writing, but even this warning does not make the silence better either for you or me. Still....

I am not quite sure what I have written about, and what not. One in particular, was the loan to me of an old IBM machine which I intended to use not in the library but in my office. Then this seemed absurd for term time at least, and so finally I have brought your machine down to my office, and taken the older one up there. Summers and long holidays when I am composing in the Library I can shift again. But already the joy of having your new machine at hand will make matters much easier--and, I hope, letters more frequent. The difficulty was that I so preferred writing on yours that I put letters off until I could get to the Library, and of course used Library time for the wrong thing. I had to get an inverter for yours, since the graduate school is on direct current. All it means is putting on a series of switches, one after the other, so that I feel as though I were taking off in a plane.

Much to write about, and possibly I shall have to put off some matters until later. But turning to the four from you that have accumulated, I think, since I last wrote you: As to *Madrigal*, I think all is well. My New York literary lawyer insisted on reading the ms before he lets me sign as liable for all libel, obscenity and other forms of evil, but I take this as a matter of routine. One would not be quite so certain in England; however almost everyone is dead. Now Grove wants to call the novel *BID ME TO LIVE*, since another novel named *Madrigal* is scheduled for England and probably for the States.

I am still counting on your being this side sometime early or mid-December as suits you best. Then you should come again during the spring with Hilda. I think she is most anxious to, from her work on ms etc. And for good reasons.

I did not get to hear Iris Murdoch's lectures on the "sublime." Perhaps they were. I believe she calls herself at least an ex-communist, and was worried about being denied permission to enter the States. I suspect she felt this gave her a little status, much like some women's pride in having been "kept" by a great lover.

Deeply interested in all you have to say about Patrick, and am eager to exchange barks about the matter when you kennel on this side. Much of what he says seems rather standardized, and in that sense not yet expressed in anything like his own idiom. In some ways perhaps he is not very developed either physically or emotionally. But American boys are often rather immature, as are some British ones. The core is in the relationship to his parents, and somewhere along the line he does need a little p.a. I feel. But I wonder if Dori is not really better for him than Erich would be. Erich I feel is excellent with women, but Dori is more positive, tougher. And in Patrick's case this would tie in with his strong bond to his sister. Too strong I feel. But not Zurich for Pat. Let him work in Paris and come to Zurich for talks of a week or so, preliminary. In any event think whether Dori would not be better. You can talk to Heydt himself about this. He feels no jealousy. The religious strain seems rather

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

feminine, and is not very different from beatnik zen in principle. Pat is a manifestation of the same disturbance. Lizzie you remember had her fling this way, but they got that out of her rather soon. There is a general feminity of sensibility in Pat which can be an advantage if controlled, but might prove disastrous. Meanwhile, let him at least keep out of the States; and be careful not to make a dependent out of him by too much help. It is all right with an established Greenlander, but to make him dependent would be pushing him in that direction. He is not ready for the hareem. There is too much ambivalence still to tell which way his pendulum will swing.

Am sending the new Faulkner to you by Monday's post, since I thought you ought to take a look and would be too busy in New York. Also bought for you the new Brinnin book on Gertrude, but then wondered in this case whether you preferred to have me send or hold until you come. I have not read, but Carl Van Vechten tells me it is good in an overall way, simply because it quotes so much from her own writing and puts it in an accessible form. Let me know whether to send the Stein or hold. I shall of course hold the various Greenland books and rather fancy you spending your time on that kind of thing when you come. A notice from Maggs said they were sending your Stefanssen. I see he is having his 80th birthday.

I was deeply disturbed at Viola's letter written by her daughter. I wonder if you should try to see her when you come over. Perhaps Pup would drive you down. It is very sad, but I doubt there is anything one can do.

I did buy the Kai Birket-Smith new edition of his *Eskimos*. There is much new archaeological and ethnographic material, and I think you will be interested. One catalogue lists ballantyne's *Coral Island*, 1858, immaculate (we have only in a later edition) for £35. The prices really are going up all the time. You were in, just in time.

The various clippings about John held me in the closest interest. With a real fascination, as one saw the details of the legend repeated and picked up and rewoven. Again I long to talk to you about it, although it seems to me that John's defection was the one cruelty in life you have not been able to shake off; was, really, a truly traumatic experience. But I think I see, in my crystal ball of extra-sensory perception that the defection was a traumatic experience for John too; and that in a paradoxical way he has been trying to absolve his feeling of guilt towards his father and mother by becoming as much like his father as possible. naturally I do not know how accurate the accounts are in the types of investments etc., but have you noticed how closely they follow the very points which your father's investments emphasized. Not going over into industrials etc as most investors would have done. And even John's anti-social nature is not so very different from an extraplation on the part of a naturally timid man of your father's own social aloofness. I suspect that being frightened of your father, yet admiring him, and craving his affection, but not receiving it (naturally enough), he turned in rebellion, yet now returns in emulation. You will not perhaps accept such a version, yet there is something in it. Just as your profile and John's are out of the same mold.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON
231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN, CONN

8 November 1959

Dearest Fido,

What a week this has been! You really must forgive my silence. Tuesday night was this dinner of the Aurelian Honor Society, about which I care little but cannot not go at least once a year. Wednesday after seminar Susan and I hurried to New York for the 25th anniversary dinner of the American Academy of Poets at which (for some obscure reason I was asked to sit on the podium) looking down at the 1200 guests at the Waldorf Astoria grand ballroom. Thursday night I had to appear at the fellows' dinner at Jonathan Edwards College, in order to introduce a new Fellow. Friday I had nothing but a string of conferences all day long, but could at least go home for supper. We refused an evening out. Yesterday was the all day convention, through a dinner meeting, of the New England American Studies Association, at which Yale was host (meaning that it was I who had to do the planning); and at nine-thirty I went to little Susan's, where Susan had gone for dinner since they were entertaining the young dean of the architecture school where Jim is a student. I really could not go. But that went on. And in a few minutes Susan and I leave for Gardner, the usual three hour drive each way for a twenty minute visit. But again I could not go.

At least I had the courage to say no to the request that I be president of the American Studies Association!

My brother writes that my mother continues to sink. It is very sad.

John S called yesterday while I was at the convention, to say that you were coming over at the end of the month. Or actually a little earlier. I was to call him today but there was no answer on the phone. They have probably gone to Long Island. No doubt I will be hearing from you soon, more directly. It will be wonderful to see you. As I wrote you, we will be in Cooperstown, New York, on Friday the 20th until late Sunday night the 22nd. And I am tied up on Tuesday the 24th at night. But things quiet down after Thanksgiving and it will be a good time to see you. We can plan more when I know what your plans are.

Two copies each of TWO SELVES and WHY DO THEY LIKE IT came, for which my thanks. And PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH. Also HONEY IN THE HORN, the John Lehman and the two Partisans. For all of which many thanks.

This is not much of a letter, but I did want to write a note before I took off. I will try for more tomorrow.

Yes, it makes the best sense to keep Kenwin open.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

10 November 1959

Dearest Fido,

I really am melted in tears, but of course there is no alternative on your part. Under the circumstances you simply cannot leave Hilda, and I do not blame her really for feeling a little overwhelmed by the circumstances. Pound's collapse does not make things any easier for her.

No she has never really forgotten Aldington as a part of her life, even though this does not take away for her feeling for you; it is simply another side of it. Her hanging on and not giving the divorce was really part of it, perhaps even the clinging to her British citizenship (although there were other, stronger reasons for this). I suppose it is the desire at the end of one's life to mend the circle again, and of course she has been reliving those years (as Pound seems to have done) in writing Madrigal etc. Her talks too with Heydt have necessarily brought them into focus. Her interest in Catha was part of this, and perhaps in a sense, because Catha turned to her, she fantasies the child as replacing the one Richard begot on her which died.

In short, if it pleases her to close the circle again in this way, do let her.

And of course make your trip to London. Dentists can't really be put off. And pick up Nadegine's ms by all means. I shall be interested to see what you think of it. Did he leave other papers that ought to be kept together?

But I really am sorry that you will not be here until after Christmas. I had looked forward to it, planned things to talk over and do, etc. But you and I both are never idle long enough to disintegrate by disappointments, and when you come you will come.

I had not realised *Ruan* was coming along so well. Brava! The second part of the Paris section of the memoirs has come, and I liked very much, especially the June party night. This is the way you will be filling out the rest of the section when the mood really comes upon you to write it. Memory comes back with the mood. The mood is not on you just at this moment. Do not worry about it. At the right moment events will flood back. The difficulty now is that the Paris section is in no way a climax to your schooldays and period up to meeting Hilda. You feel this incongruity between Paris and the earlier experiences, and it wills you and your fingers; you cannot will them. I am not at all disappointed, any more than I was when *Ruan* went slowly some years ago. I knew its moment would come. Apparently it has; the moment for Paris will come too. Perhaps Sylvia's book knocked yours out of your mind for a bit.

A harvest for me yesterday and today. This morning's mail brought yours of the 7th. Yesterday saw the 4th, 5th, and another 7th. No sooner had I sent off your letter Sunday morning and gone home, after not getting John on the phone, when John called at the last moment before we left for Gardner, to tell me of your second wire. I was puzzled as to what Aldington was up to, but of course sensed

NORMAN

HOLMES

PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

your difficulty.

The trips to Gardner are increasingly sad. My mother has at last been able to move into a larger and more comfortable room at the end of a hallway. This is quieter. In her earlier room, she said, people made a good deal of noise going to and from dances. It rather broke one's heart and nerve to listen to her. She is seldom rational, although she recognized us both and was glad we were there. But she rather has a skunner on against my sister just now, and informed me first at great length, and then Susan, that each of the many churches in Gardner were meeting that very day, called by the ministers, to deny Eleanor access to the congregations. "She is a bad woman." The trouble was my sister's having used the Elm Street maid one day, and then been foolish enough to tell my mother as a bit of interesting news. It was rather grim also to hear a long narrative about how my mother through her cleverness had telephoned Boston, and unbeknownst to anyone, had summoned 100 horsemen to Gardner. My mother had stayed awake waiting for them until at last she had heard their hoofbeats outside the window, and then she could sleep knowing that the troops had been saved. Susan was quite bewildered by this, since it was given in fragments and mixed up like a jigsaw puzzle, but I think I recognized t.v. and the westerns in it. I found myself gentle in listening and congratulating her, but my mind spun round and round at night when I tried to sleep. So much for that! She has three nurses, and likes them and they like her. It is a blessing. I wonder how long it will go on.

You have hit the *Helen Wolff* situation on the head. Kurt is the *Walter* type, in a sense, and he returns to the sense of the old Europe much as Hilda returns to the memory of the square. But Helen is another generation, another ambition. And she has her son; Kurt had already gently passed aside an earlier brood. This is nothing against him, simply that at this moment they represent quite different types of human beings. Helen is tossed back on the beach, and she wants to swim and be alive.

Aldington does rather surprise me, wanting to go back to Zurich. I think he is lonely, old, sick, and poor. He seeks refuge, and perhaps Hilda can give it to him vicariously at least. One might have thought that pride..... but, then, who has it in this day. You and I perhaps, not many!

The news from Pound is startling. I am eager to have more details as you hear them from Heydt. The core is some fight over Marcella, or between Marcella and Dorothy. Dorothy is a bulldog; always bet on her. Besides, Ezra is in her custody, which gives D.P. an overwhelming advantage. One might say, there could be no real contest. So be it.

But I think you are right too--though it sounds like heresy--in thinking that Hilda will in one sense love every minute of it, tremble and shake and weep as she may. For she is the queen bee, and afterwards they will fall mangled and maimed.

Another letter from Bevanice Abbott, seni... an article for you and a letter

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

which I am sending on surface. You can answer or not as you like. A bill from
Pantheon indicates that the two other novels have gone to her, and since she asks
after Hilda I send a copy of the POEMS to her also. I suspect she is a Greenlander
but I will protect you even from having to tell her or share.

Will hold the Stein until you indicate. But wouldn't you rather have your Christmas presents in early driblets?

Many thanks for the *Wranglee Island* which arrived in this morning's mail.
Also a copy of Cecil Grey's autobiography which I thought I ought to have for
my reference shelf. I ordered from Blackwell's. I also ordered a copy of a
translation from the Russian by Dorothy R. which I saw in a British catalogue.
I have turned over the collection to Yale who are much enthused. I gave it all
as from you, although there are a number of items I bought myself to fill in.
But the tribute is yours. I rather like the idea of sometime building up a
collection for each of the group from whom you had substantial correspondence,
so that altogether the circle is there with you at the center. But not that so
much as to see that somewhere there is preserved the record.

By the way I now have the dramatization of *Gate to the Sea*. I had held
as for your coming. Shall I send over now? It is not that bad. Hilda might be
interested to read, and you could take a peek, although I think not quite your
cup of iambs.

One problem has arisen, which I intended to discuss with you when you
came, but perhaps you can answer by mail. A technicality in one sense, but of
course hardly that in another. It is about the insurance of the Elizabethan
books. They are insured in my name, *but* the insurance people say that if the
title is in your name then the insurance people would back out of paying anything
on the present policy. Instead I should insure them in your name. What do you
think? The question of their disposition is not quite the issue, since I could
give them wherever you wish if you should wish (naturally I love having them to
read, and do read them, tenderly and carefully), or I could always sell them for
your benefit in case of a crise of one nature or another. In the days when the
British currency restrictions were tighter I frequently referred to them as a
gift from you, as you said to, and I think this is a general impression. But this
is not of any importance, and the impression could still be that way or altered
and in any event the books insured as in your name. This is all very awkwardly
expressed as you can see. Meanwhile I have a floater policy on them again while
I wait for your instructions.

I still wait to tell you in detail about Sylvia's party. But one by
one I may be able to sketch them. Sylvia herself I met on her way in, looking very
resplendent in a new brown dress, but most nervous and obviously suffering from
ptomaine poisoning. So she sat at a corner table and received. With her, and also

receiving, but I should not have said by Sylvia's intent was a gray suited
rather masculinely handsome woman who seemed a little annoyed that Sylvia was
so friendly with me and that I was not known to her. Rather rudely, I thought,
she reached over and plucked my legion ribbon asking me how long I had been in
Paris. I supposed this got my Yankee dander up, so I said "only weekends."
"Did you get it for helping Sylvia?" she blurted. "No, in the war." "You're
too young for the first war of course!" "I led a child's crusade." Well,
after a little while of this sort of thing, with a breather given by others who
came up, I told Janet Flanner (to identify her, since by this time I knew her
name) how grateful we were for the introduction she wrote to a volume in the
Stein series. This mollified her by showing proper respect for the great Genet;
"what did you say your name was?" I hadn't but I did, and so we parted on a
note of great transoceanic amity.

I will tell you of other meetings with the great, later. If you desire.

Yours very truly,

very very very regretfully that you cannot come,

but with infinite love and (I hope) understanding,

I am, your

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

15 November 1959

Dearest Fido,

Have held back for the last two days, from writing, hoping I might hear from you definitely about your trip to London. Somehow I had the feeling some urgency might have come up to postpone your dental work. If only the Sesame would forward, I could risk mailing there.

Not much to report except the good feeling of getting my review in to the *Saturday Review*. Why I say I will do these things I don't know, for I never ought to. Yet it doesn't do me any harm to be made to write, so that my hand gets a little firmer that way. Only this acceptance by telephone turned out to be horrible: a book on novels about the ministry, and another of editorials on books by a Catholic priest.

Now I have budget to prepare, and especially the dreary reams of learned articles by instructors and assistant professors up for promotion. My conscience will not let me vote against them unless I have actually read what they have written, even though few faculty members do read what they pretend to evaluate. But I am easily shocked.

In the last yellow batch of letters, I was quite pleased by Joanna's letter; it seemed most adjusted, and her control over the two boys is obviously a step over her own experience. I liked the boy's letter too. Viola's letter was distressing. As she does, I really wish there could be an end of it for her.

17 November

I had paused thinking I might get a letter from you confirming the London trip in time for the letter to Sesame. But yours of the 12th has only just arrived, and I dare not risk it. Actually this can't be much of a script, since it is now three in mid-afternoon and I must prepare a lecture on modern poetry to give tonight in a neighboring town. At least I have a few gimmicks to use, and so will be alternately think and praying from now on.

A telephone call from my brother says my mother continues to worsen, in the sense that she now completely lives in a world of fantasy--oddly, I gather now it is for the moment a world of kings and queens who live in the club with her. The doctors have said she could stay in the hospital until she dies, even though this may talk as long as a year. Or shall we say one must be prepared for it--it is hard for me to believe that sinking as she constantly does it can last that long. But remembering my father, it is not impossible. We have decided to close down the family home, and let the housekeeper go--since three attendants a day in addition to the hospital bills will be enough to cope with. It is rather a pity one cannot sell and dismantle, but this is difficult estate-wise, and I daresay for my brother and sister who live in Gardner, the criticism of such inhumanity (when a miracle might restore my mother to the physique of a Russian shot-putter) would be difficult to be civil to.

As it turns out, perhaps --one had not really expected this --

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 November 1959

Dearest Fido:

This is near the end of the Thanksgiving holiday, and I am trying desperately to catch up with the accumulation on my desk. The past fortnight or so has been too hectic, and although out brief holiday in Cooperstown was a relaxation, of course it did nothing to diminish my obligations. So, except for yesterday when we drove to Gardner, I have spent most of the time at my office writing letters of recommendation for prospective teachers, junior executives, fellowship holders, applicants for Guggenheims, and the like. It is so hard not to relief on cliches, especially when one does not always really know the abilities of the one to be recommended. But they must have *some one*, and that little *some one* tends to be me.

But this is so common a complaint that I will not bore with it again. Your several yellow envelopes have been in, and I thank you for my Christmas present which I have dutifully kept from unwrapping and will have for my tree. Hilda's wrapped gift came also, as well as a calendar to Susan and myself. You are prompter than I have been. The package from Spinks has not yet come, but I do not promise to be patient about that. I shall certainly have to look at it at once. The letters seem very much in order: I am constantly pleased that Doris seems so happy, and, I think, relaxed. It was important for her to give up the locale embittered by John. Margery's dream of your reply to her query as to how she might thank should become the motto on your coat of arms. I shall never forget: "Violets now and a stained glass window later." So echo I for you. Sachie's trip to Peru sounds well sponsored now, and with your Portuguese in Brazil, and Kenneth and Islay having been there before, surely now you must see this continent yourself. Margery's story about Judith Masefield's Messiah sounds like California.

Your own letters have of course too much piled up, but now that my next year's departmental budget has been turned in (as of last Wednesday) I shall be back in my regular stride again. As for your visit, I was sorry to read in your letter of the 25th which came yesterday that you would not be over before Christmas, altho I cannot say I was much surprised. I only hope you will do the R.A. story for me in the greatest detail. As for coming over after January first, why not. I have to leave for Chicago the day after Christmas to be gone about a week at the Modern Language Convention, a bore but necessary for a chairman who has people to see and people to sell. There is surely enough for us to talk over, quite apart from the joy it would give me to see you.

I am curious about Heydt, after reading your letters and Hilda's. Some change of mind is obviously building up. I suspect it is quite simply the new presence of Dori, for no matter what the correct relationship between patient and analyst should be, it was obvious that Heydt was infatuated by Hilda and her gifts. But it was honest enough, and so no harm in it. I think too that he has his eye on the States again, or if not going there will live as though he did: cf his new charge for fees.

Maggs has written about the two Greenland books and the account of

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

Denmark. You will see by the enclosed clipping that I have not quite forgotten either. The talk went off reasonably well, there were some 200 there, and by picking the prettiest slides from both of our trips there was something for everyone. Last Wednesday night we entertained a Crosby Lewis and his wife from Montreal. He worked for me during the war, and his wife was the American Ambassador's secretary whom I had transferred to us so they could marry. He will look up about the Mackenzie trip for us as for a summer after this. By an odd chance his younger brother has been a visiting professor this year in American literature, R.W.B. Lewis, whom I like very much and am supporting the effort to bring him here permanently as professor of English and American Studies. We need someone with the rank of full professor, and he is young and lively and writes well. Fortunately he has been more or less free for a number of years and so has written and published enough to satisfy Yale's particular requirements. I hope he can come, and assist me in some of the lesser administration. Who knows, perhaps I might sometime be able to get the free time to do some publishing on my own. This is not ironic. Three more years and I will not have to be an administrator any more. It looks gloriously near!

Mary Hotson phoned Thanksgiving morning, while I was at the office, to wish us a happy Thanksgiving, and told Susan her leg was much better. They were going to the Cleanth Brookses, where they would precede the meal by a hymn sing, and after dinner Leslie would sing ballads. It is too soon for carols, but they will come shortly. I think I could arrange a hymn sing for early in January, to welcome in you and the new year.

I cannot remember whether I remarked on Adejine's papers. In any event I will put the French letters aside until I can go over them. Was it your idea to have the Russian ones translated? We can discuss this when you come. In any way you are of course right, the French letters ought not to be destroyed.

Did I tell you that Mrs Wohlenberg will not be working for me after July 1st? I am desolate but not surprised, since her spirits are back again, her husband's estate has been settled, and her son will be through graduate school in June. She only wanted to work part time to begin with, and I am lucky to have had her for so long. Anyhow I have a goodish time in which to find her successor.

I think we can put off the question of the Elizabethan books until you come over. I should not have brought it up if there had not been this question of the insurance. As you remember, when you first began to ship them across there was the question of their being here in the first place and so at your suggestion I referred to them as my own and when they were on exhibition had them as from me. All this in case I had to brazen it out with the British if they objected to their being on this side while in your possession. In case of necessity they could always have been sold and money given to you or elsewhere if you had to get out of Europe without proper funds. That is the way I should still look at them, and they do make a convenient and negotiable safety belt. Of course I love having them, and reading them, but quite apart from that I should not try to give them away or sell them for the moment at least.

The Dame's accident sounded incredible, and I wonder if you gathered further hints. I feel somehow alarmed. On quite another point, do you gather that the Dame's little feud with me is now over? I hope so, for it always did seem a little silly on her part.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

We drove a long hard drive to Gardner yesterday, in absolutely torrential of rain and tornado like winds, following up what has been several weeks of predominantly bad weather. I stopped to see my brother for a moment and he told me my mother was much worse last night, and my sister came to the hospital just as we were leaving because she had heard much the same. The nurse said she was in a very troubled state (she= my mother). But to the contrary my mother's face lighted up with pleasure when we came in, we had a half hour's visit of reasonable coherence, and there was no doubt that the visit had pleased her. I presume she will not have remembered it give minutes after we left, but that hardly matters. It is only temporary in these little gains. I do hope it will not go on too long.

Must get back to correcting papers. All love as always,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

7 December 1959

Dearest Fido,

The enclosed letter was in this morning's mail. At first I was furious with Tregarthen's Hotel for not knowing you. Then I realized that I had forgotten to put U.K. on the address, and, obviously, it went to Sicily. Perhaps elsewhere. Now, hopefully, it will be in your hands at last.

Your letter of the 3rd was also in the mail. No, I want more
than ever to live, perhaps even to revenge myself against these years of
wasted energy on administrative matters, chores.

As I told you in my yesterday's letter: yes, do come. There
is much to talk about, and much for you to read. So you can cuddle here in
New Haven for as long as you will. Pup would probably be happy to have you
about, since she will not have much freedom for roaming.

I shouldn't tell you; it was meant as a surprise. But THE DESPERATE PEOPLE is already en route to you, wrapped gaily in Christmas paper. There is another book by an Oblate priest-flyer. Shall I get? Perhaps I will for myself and you can read when here.

No, do not worry about Edith. It is all long past. At the time
of your second book, when Jean Starr Untermeyer told Helen she had written
the Saturday Review for the chance to review your book, Helen and Kurt
begged me (really despite my fears) to write Edith and ask her if she would
ask the Review for the chance to review your book. "But it is so important!
Wouldn't you?" So I did. I had no answer. I wrote another note later,
sending good will at the time Edith was leaving the States (she was here that
winter). No answer. Gallup saw her at Lincoln Kirstein's. Her indirect message
to me was a story of how a named (not me) incredible person had incredibly
asked her (Edith, proto-Dame) to ask for a review, when people must write to
her asking if she would graciously consent to reviewing. I know how she must
have felt; I would hate to write too, although I know people do. But the
circumstances may have troubled her afterwards, for on her return to England
she wrote Collins and offered to write her preface. And this was truly kind.

Will check on Francis Leary.

I enclose a copy of a letter from Spender, who has been in the
States, and wanted Hodgson's address from me. I have written him saying
that I did see that Hodgson had a sum each year, from funds not my own, and
that I had an understanding with Mrs H to take care of hospital bills etc in
case of an emergency. That I really thought the appearance of the house ought
not to be taken too seriously, and that some of it was because he liked it
that way. You recall that he had been plentifully able to supply himself with
several English newspapers magazines etc., as she said out of your generosity.
Perhaps we could fly out and check when you come, taking a plane to Canton
and hiring a drive-it-yourself from there. I will write anyhow when I send
Christmas check. Do you think I should raise it to $2,000? There is enough.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

8 December 1959

Dearest Fido,

All sorts of packages and envelopes in from you, i ncluding the Bonner _Jones_ and my little blue engagement pad for next year; for which my thanks. Also four envelopes of the Nadejine papers, which I will have put in order. We can talk about their disposition later. At the moment I rather think they should stay with the Bryher archives. At least until we see what can be done with his memoirs. I gather those will be shown first to Helen. This is a good idea. She will have a sense of the best approach, and where.

Also two packages from Maggs, of Greenlandics. Actually they were not quite what the letter from them said would be included, but all were interesting. The 1647 Relation du Greenland came as listed; also the 1822 Manby Journal of a Voyage to Greenland. But only one instead of the five listed volumes of ...... At this point I have checked back and cannot possibly tell what was included in their typed inventory under the third item: Molesworth, Account of denmark, etc 5 vols., since this includes a second edition of Manby, a description of Sweden etc all rather miscellaneous. I think they must have been tired of listing, although this is odd. I shall not bother them about it.

Thought you might be amused by the enclosed clipping. I really think, now, that you need not fear an electric typewriter. The point will be to color your finger nails. What could be simpler. And what could be handier for a small child than an electric typewriter to take around in one's purse; for after all one could hardly expect them to learn to write by hand after such ease.

Another letter from Maggs speaks of more Hentys, Ballantyne and Kingstons. They will make excellent additions. I have bought one or two myself to show you when you come.

The new Pro Juventute stamps have caused a sensation on this side. People clamor for them for their collections.

The R.A. chapter was rather a success I should gather, and I am glad you liked him so much. The matter of the citizenship is natural enough; it was a second disowning of himself. R.A. is basically a rural Britisher who has pulled himself a leg or two up and therefore made rural England impossible. His French hermitage is a little like Hodgson's, without the bull terriers or an Aurelia. I am interested to know how much he reverts to the 1910-1915 period. It has to do with the division you speak of between the boy's head and the man's body; and also to the fact that then he was "in". He has really never been "in" since the war, and he is the sort of man who needs sustaining by a group. His memoirs will be interesting.

I will wait for Lady Vyvyan's book, and be anxious to read it.

I thought the Murdoch bulletin would get you. But I thought

NORMAN

HOLMES

PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

important for you to see, as keeping in touch with the English bullbitch abroad. But she is confident! In that respect she is rather like C.P. Snow. Did you tell you that I saw him and Lady Snow again at Sylvia's party in New York? They were on the American circuit for the winter. These quasi-academics like Snow and Murdoch are rather ruling the roost. I gather. No one else seems to have energy.

An American lady has written, at the suggestion of Rose Odle, to say she has 35 letters from D.R. to sell--a correspondence of a pen pal sort. But D.R. seemed to like these relationships, and I suspect wrote sincerely, and perhaps with fully as many literary remarks in them as to friends. I have written to inquire, and if reasonable will buy as from you to go to the collection. (I did not by the way turn over your own letters from D.R. They belong directly with your archives, and of course can always be available to Edle or his successors.

I checked the Victoria photograph book, but it was out of stock. They have promised to let me know when it is in again.

Received an invitation for the University of Buffalo exhibition of Sylvia's Joyce Collection. They are doing it all up brown, and I am glad for Sylvia's sake. The things would be used much more at Yale than there, but we could not sustain the continued tributes to her personally.

Yes, I hope you can come over after the New Year. Plans do not seem quite to take shape, but I will certainly be back from Chicago by the beginning of January; and I do not seem to have anything but routine engagements for a while. There might be a blizzard of two; but it might also be as warm as May when you come again.

All love as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN, CONN

15 December 1959

Dearest Fido,

I am back in the situation of having to sneak away nights to the office in order to get my private mail done. Not the necessity of secrecy of course, but only the need of time. So many academic threads must be retucked into the weave at this time, students to be interviewed etc.

I think I must be a kind of magnet for the neurotic. A fair share of the morning was spent with a graduate girl student who plaintively told me she had been in love for the past year and a half with a homosexual graduate student, now under analysis, whom she could not give up. Yet.... Her mother is an alcoholic manicurist and divorced from her father whom the mother says was homosexual, and eventually remarried to a bartender who is a moddy alcoholic. The girl says her childhood up to 14 was unhappy because of promiscuity of all parents and step-parents. Rather a mess. I suggested her affair had something to do with trying to show that her mother might have managed it with her father etc., and so it went. I shall have to charge fees.

With Hansen, I must say the amateur treatment this summer got him over the hump and he passed his oral examination for the degree in very creditable fashion last Tuesday. Did not seem to clutch during the examination, and although he does not have a sparkling mind he did answer in a suitably Danish manner. He came in today most grateful for your Christmas letter and check, which he said came at rather a barren time. It will make their Christmas much happier and easier. I do thank you.

Ingholt came upstairs this morning to tell me, first of all, that he had just seen the proof of the University who told Ingholt that he would be getting his full professorship now. As Ingholt said, it was due to the Gandharan book, and he was of course most grateful, especially to you. Actually it was indeed due to the Gandharan book, as I knew from members of the Classics Department, and I mentioned to an important one of them last spring that I wondered if this wouldn't be enough.

I was equally pleased to realize from Islay's letter that thanks in part to the book and even more to the Goughs he was beginning to get some commissions.

Horace called Sunday about Hilda's problem in connection with the title of her book, and her disturbance that it cannot still be called Madrigal even though another book by the same title is to be published in England and probably in the States. Horace said he would do what he could about the matter, and I am sure that if anyone could he can. He will talk to Rossett and then write Hilda.

Horace spoke of his increasing difficulty in walking, saying that he could get around only with the greatest difficulty. He hopes to be able to save enough for another year off next year. I wish I could truly evaluate the situation. Or how much he needs. One thing I suspect and that is that he will not want to go abroad again, as he has been doing recently. Your three thousand will surely help; whether I ought to give him two thousand more I don't know. My secret hope is that I can get the five thousand dollar American Academy of Poetry award

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

for him, but that would not come until next November--too late for him to take
academic advantage of it for another year. I don't say I will or can, mind you;
but Fred Pottle (one of the chancellors) reminded me yesterday that it was my
suggestion that got the award this year for Leonie Adams, and I have gotten awards
for three out of the last five. All this has to be sub rosa of course, or the
jig would be up.

I sent off two thousand to Hodgson today, and hope this will do it.
I spoke of the possibility that you might come over sometime in the winter or
spring and we might be able to see them. Just to check up. I enclose a copy of
Spender's answer. I think I shall tell him to tell the Omnians to do what they
want to do. It won't be enough to matter anyhow. BUT I INSIST that the house is
the way it is because that is the way Hodgson wants it to be. Even Spender's idea
seems to be something with chintz. I sent Hodgson by the way also for Christmas
a copy of the Victoria book, a copy of which went out to you. If you ordered
yourself, give it Frau Herf. I thought he might be amused.

I put the Desperate People on my own Christmas list, desperately, so
I will be well stocked. But I will take one back and exchange. I will get the
prayer book on wings, in case something worthwhile may be in it. But you can
run your nose along it when you come out.

Yes, I will have read remy de Gourmont. But you are right, I probably
would not have read him if I had not mysteriously come from the same womb as
yourself. Actually John Gould Fletcher gave me his Gourmonts, and he was rather
a favorite of E.P.'s.

Susan did get her engagement pad, and if she were not deep in wrapping
Christmas presents would write to thank you. Also some excellent Maggies
came in for the Henty et al collection.

And I hope you will not curse me, but I could not resist and did open
the box from Spinks when it came. I rub your nose, with delight. The whale is
a charm against all evil, but the polar bear denies the very existence of evil
by its own wonderfulness. It is quite polar bearX, the a-per-se of polar bears,
the ur-bear. How can I thank you? But how can I ever thank you?

Little Susan was of course touched and grateful for your gift. They had
planned on last year's as the last, and so had saved from it enough to carry them
through next year too they hope. This will ease matters, and even give them the
chance for a trip abroad after he finished school. But do not give again. They
are now nicely taken care of. Both Susan and I are grateful too.

The offer of a hundred dollars for the 35 D.R. letters was accepted. A trifle
higher than I pay in England, but less by far than what I would have to pay a
dealer. I will save for you to see when you come over before giving them to the
library.

Must close. All love.

BALLAD OF THE UNMIRACULOUS MIRACLE

Sit under a pine on Christmas Eve,
Heart bruised like a fallen nestling,
And the angels will sing you—no song save
The wind in the branches wrestling.

Peer down a mystical well and see
Far down in its waters mirrored—
The only sign there imaged for me,
My own face mournful and harrowed.

Seek out a stable known of old
And see the oxen kneel— —
With me crouched here before the cold
And hunger sharp as steel.

Go wander through the winter snows
And spy the Christmas bud
Unfold itself—the only rose
The brambles bear, my blood.

Like wingless birds are wind and wood,
Well, oxen, flowering bush
Till Christmas Day when I see God
Plumaged in my plucked flesh.

VASSAR MILLER

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

24 December 1959

Dearest Fido,

You must not speak of neglecting me! Here is the last letter
I can write, and although I would save your letter and Hilda's for last it
means now hardly more than shorthand notes for so much that has accumulated
to write about. I suppose so far as a newsletter is concerned my missive to
Hilda becomes a kind of prologue to yours. We send our love to you both, not
unaware of our good fortune in giving you both as friends.

Saturday I have to fly out to Chicago to be gone until the
30th when I fly back. Fortunately three societies are meeting in the same
city at the same time, so I can go from one to the other: the Modern Language
Association, the American Historical Association, and the American Studies
Association. Oh yes, I forgot: the College English Association is meeting
there also. I will be able to sneak in a postcard; do not hope for much more.

First of all, may I say how deeply troubled I am about Edith.
Is there no chance to get her to good doctors in New York, perhaps to bring
her over when you come. Er, I suppose, you could ask Prutting. He will know
what is best.

I enclose a copy of Aurelia Hodgson's Christmas letter, written
I should assume before my letter with its check reached her. I may have been
underestimating the situation. I shall write again after Christmas and try to
get the matter straight. Aurelia shoots squarely, and will not put up any
picture of matters for any selfish purposes. I want to know whether she is
able to work etc. Who is the Roy Pearson she speaks of. Steve Benet wrote
John Brown's Body, of course.

Next matter to raise your hackles or set you into gales of
laughter (which I hope will be the alternative) is the enclosed proposition
from Canada. I am so glad it is all happening within the Commonwealth of
Nations. The letter is really a classic. One could not imagine finding
quite so many possible. I am so glad that Mr Vance is sensitive to the work
of the original artist, and that he holds your writings in high regard.
Otherwise you might be unwilling to let him make these changes. SERIOUSLY:
the proposition is out of the question. So do not worry your little head about
it, but you can enjoy a bulldog splutter or two.

I am so glad you found a Romano British bowl for Rosemary at
Spinks. The good fairy must have waived his wand. I cut out the review of her
new novel from the Times which I thought you might like to see and then pass
on to her. Should I buy the novel and read it?

I can't check much about Francis Leary except that he took his
Master's degree here in history in 1940 and now lives in New York. His address
is in care of one Eva Woodburn at a private address, which sounds interesting
since this is not the name of his wife (Helen).

The Nadegine papers are well arranged at least for the moment, and
await your visit to discuss further work with them.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 H G S
YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN · CONN

I was interested in a letter from Ethel indicating that Joan had been persuaded to do something about her annulment. Do bring me up to date on this.

I drove to Gardner yesterday to take presents to my brother's family and my sister's. Susan has had such a wretched cold that she did not go. It was bitter cold for us, below twenty all day, but fortunately the sun shone and the countryside was pretty. My mother was in rather worse shape than recently, although glad to see me in a subdued way. I think I told you that a fortnight ago she felt her mother had died, now it is her father who has died. Her first question to me was whether they had come back from Affrey and the funeral yet, and several times during my visit she repeated the question. My own father has been to see her often and written her pleasant letters, although she forgot to tell him that she couldn't answer the letters because her right hand was like stone. The nurse says she is much concerned with death and says that she too is dying. Usually I have thought she was happy in her own world. This time she wasn't.

It is after six and I really must go back to the house. But when I send you both love you will know how great it is.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

1 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

Back Wednesday from Chicago and as hectic a four day period as one could hope for. But thanks to my total abstinence from either tobacco or alcohol--shocking to say the least to my many friends at the meetings-- I am less worn and unraveled than one might have expected. Yesterday was rather confused also: a visit to the doctor, the barber, the tailor and the like, and simply going through the small mass of things on my desk which had piled up during my absence. I have slipped down to the office today really only to write you and Hilda, as appropriate to the beginning of a new year. That you have my love and more for it needs only the memory of rubbed noses to confirm. I do not have to say these things to you.

Vast batches of letters (in yellow) have come in, but I shall save commenting on them until tomorrow. And four letters were waiting for me, for which I properly woofed. I will bear all in mind as per instructions for Hilda's Herbal. We will safeguard properly, and Susan will no doubt enjoy leafing through it if this is agreeable to Hilda. There is no rush about the book matter as a whole. The insurance people simply insisted that I had to take out a policy, so I renewed as before in my name. It can be shifted to yours at any time you want. The tax people do not take cognizance of this. The only risk is fire or death.

Glad you liked the little poem by Vassar Miller. I agree that Christmas poems per se are usually pretty stupid. This is a little more. She is apparently about 32, lives in Houston, has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth. Perhaps she is my Rosemary S. Anyhow she writes not metaphors but feeling, doing it in such a way that her own feelings get absorbed into a generality and one does not feel embarrassed. I read her ms among those submitted to the Wesleyan series and we are publishing next fall. I think she may have something really interesting, although Houston is an unlikely place to find a poet.

Am worried about George, and am certain as you are that it is his own cooking that does it--by which I mean the kind of cooking even a good cook does for himself alone. Too much fried foods, too little balance of vegetables and the like. I doubt that doctors would help. But it is important that he have changes every so often. I do wish his Amy could go back again next year, or he be persuaded to visit her in the States.

Probably no hurry on Horace for the moment. The Hodgson situation looks a little grim. I spoke at length about them at the Chicago meeting. The factory has closed and she is out of work. I am going to write her straight out and ask her what the situation is.

Your description of the Christmas at Kenwin, and *Père Noel* was splendid. I am glad you could experience it.

I leave it to you about the May 4th blitz. Should I read Howarth or do I know it well enough from experience and my field glasses?

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 H G S

You ask about whether they are going to keep me off cigarettes and whiskey much longer. The doctor said that he hoped I would never smoke again, but not particularly because of ulcers. I really feel so much better having given them up that I don't care, and probably will not smoke again. Except for going to the arctic. I doubt I could stand the black flies and mosquitoes without a cloud of self-induced smoke. As to the alcohol, they asked a year's abstinence. But I am not sure I will take that up either, at least until I get caught up on some of my work. This is however much trickier from a social position, but I do not really care.

The chief thing is that I feel so much better again, and you will have to forgive your lead dog much.

Sniffs and nuzzles and waggings of tails,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

3 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

This seems the moment for one of those spotty memoranda
which try to take in everything. I have been spending Sunday in a hopeless
effort to put the top of my desk in a little order. A kind of placation of
the new year. I hope it can be an effective one. At least I am in better
health than for a long long time, and although I shall not be able to stir
very far so long as my mother is alive I ought to be able to accomplish a
little all the same. Then we can all pick up and fly. Susan gave me for
Christmas a lovely four-suit bag of canvass, so light that I can carry it in
my own teeth while I wave my arms in flight.

But now for the various scraps in your yellow envelopes and the
like: Many thanks for sending the Kenneth Graham. I was never a great Wind
in the Willows man, but as a character he interests me very much indeed.....
The clipping about missing manuscripts which Hilda sent on is intriguing, but
I must say it sounds a little Hollywoodish, where everything believes that he's
(usually commonplace) ideas have been stolen by others and converted into huge
hits. I have heard of nothing missing, and have missed nothing.

You do seem to have hit it off with Aldington, which is fine; but
I hope you will not push too far. I think Hilda would resent it as snatching a
bit from her, or taking over. I suspect he would willingly be took over, despite
a streak of real stubborn quality in him. He was, I think, always a little prim
and conservative in regard to others, and judged them with stern middle class
principles, reserving for himself the right of special liberties. Do let him place
anything he wants to, from H.D. It is always hard to know just what the right
limits should be. Horace and I have agreed, perhaps wrongly, that Hilda should be
kept a little aloof, a little apart from the British spirit of literary journalism
(which Sachie, OB., Jocelyn and others do so well, but which Americans simply don't
understand. We like to give the impression that the public should be eager and
panting for what she is at intervals willing for them to have, after long and careful
carving. If he could help as for France and Italy it would be especially helpful.
As for Harry Moore, whom Aldington mentions as having done such a wonderful job for
Lawrence, he really wouldn't do at all. I know him well, he has immense industry but
no standing. He works better with corpses than with living artists. I get along well
with him because I am a corpse rather than an artist, and saw him again during my
Chicago meetings. Anyhow, under no circumstances antagonize Aldington. I think he
must think of me as his rival. I am out of competition, as they say at flower shows.
Your "coping" with me will be easy.

Part III of RUAN is here, but I obey your orders and do not read until
I have the rewritten first two parts. I think of novels so much as a whole that I
am thrown offbase otherwise than by reading the whole. Helen speaks of leaving the
American punctuation to me as before. I should be happy to do it, but this is
entirely up to you. I am not quite sure whether this is a lollypop, as you call them,
or in your new manner. I think Helen is quite right in not wanting to send Pantheon
anything until you have it in final shape. Holsaert and I always see eye to eye,
but Helen was so centrally active before that no one can take her place in the office.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

I notice that I had laid several of Aldington's letters aside to comment on, but mostly they have to do with getting her things into print and encouraging articles about her. He writes entertainingly.

What are your plans for the Nadegine memoirs. I gather Kurt and Helen both like them.

Did you hear from Robert at Christmas? I notice that Lorna says there has been silence recently towards her.

I had a charming note from George, post-Christmas. I only hope his eventual visit to you will help put him back on his feet again. Would a visit by someone (you?) to his doctor in England, put things straight as to what should be done?

I was delighted with Margery Lewis' letter, and intrigued by the concept of "humble clothes". I think I like her best, although Hilda Quick has her real points.

Much interested in Ronnie's economic forecasts. I think he has the right slant on the immediate British future. Perhaps three or four years of prosperity at the most; this time I think it will be the States that will feel the depression first. I am sending you separately several clippings on the far eastern situation, which people on this side are beginning (some of them) to glimpse at last. Drew Pearson is not always absolutely reliable, but he has his ear close to the ground.

Sachie's news of Edith sounds a little encouraging, but I am still worried about the long range situation. I wish she would see a first rate doctor. But perhaps she has.

Forty papers to correct tomorrow before classes begin again. Wish me luck.
Send me letters. Send me love.

I do,

Affection & Sylvia if she is still well you.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

5 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

Your two letters of the 31st and 2nd were in today's mail to happy me. Your description of the return from Zürich was a little masterpiece. All I could think of was Kurt Weil's "Moon of Alabama" from *Mahagonny*. Rock and roll? It is nothing but any music put to a particularly heavy accent, with the same effect on the dancers as from the Charleston, the Lindy Hop. Or to put it another way, it becomes a kind of folk dance to a faster rhythm. What offends is the overaccented beat especially when applied to songs generally regarded in the category of :Nearer my God to Thee!" Seen and heard once or twice it is exhilarating; but on repetition it becomes unbearable. Your lady reading on the art of eroticism would not approve, preferring the titillation of the tangoing male to this frenzied thrusting of the stallion.

Sorry that Heydt did this stunt of the wedding anniversary. You may be right in thinking of it as shock therapy; I do know that Dori goes in for this, since she was always applauding my own applications of this to Hansen and others, when I told them. Heydt rather demurred. She has a much more powerful personality, and is I think precisely the complement that he needs. But all this is rough on Hilda, and I rather feel it is unnecessary.

No, I suspect that New York is not the place to send Edith. It would be chaper to fly a doctor to England. I was thinking of a Swiss sanitarium, But then I remember Hilda's adventures and recall that one's old cliches about Swiss medicine no longer hold.

Ezra? Probably it is not right to hold him in such schizophrenic regard as I do, separating his particular politics from the general romantic position he holds. But he knows we are at swords lengths on any political matters!

The Pearsall Smith book I shall be interested in. I was always sorry, afterwards, not to have accepted Hilda's invitation to meet him. It was not that I feared him as a Greenlander, but that the war kept me so busy that my only engagements were with you and Hilda, with Edith, and occasionally with Violet Gordon Woodhouse.

Took the cheque for $4997.50 to the bank and suitably divided today.
Received the enclosed letter from the Hogdsons, but had already written to ask.
It will do no harm. Leslie was in after lunch to show me the first copy of
his book, and the first review or two--fortunately very favorable. You will
have received your copy by now; the one he showed me came by air, the rest will
be by surface, so it will be some time before I can read it. Miraculously they
both begin to mix with the Yale group, whom they have actually spurned before.
I am pleased and think they will find several whom they can truly like.

All love as always. Take care of yourself.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

10 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

Two days ago I was a man; now I am only a swollen and stuffed
nose, and the moutpiece for a hacking cough. I had successfully avoided
contagion from Susan, little Sue and her husband and child, and had unwisely
laid my superiority to clean living without alcohol or tobacco. But God
obviously wishing to humble me has laid me low. Actually I suppose I am
lucky to have the worst of it over the weekend, while we had only one overnight
guest yesterday, and only Justus for overnight today. (We cannot rival Kenwin,
but you set us an inspiring example.) However I am well supplied with pills,
have a temperature only slightly above normal, and can at least come to the
office to write you.

As always, your Christmas mail means a lot to me in bringing me
up to date with the circle. But your own letters are always best, and I am
grateful for having had three of them since I wrote you last.

I was sorry about Ena's mother, but.... (Incidentally I have not
been able to get to ardner since Christmas, but the situation apparently re-
mains about the same. I shall try to go next weekend despite the snow and ice.)
Philip's heart attack is distressing. I do not know what we can do about
George! I wonder if it would be worthwhile your talking to the doctor, on the
side. Then at least one would know.

As for O.B. you are good as always, and right as always. He was
always on the list--I really rather picture myself as having to make, some day,
a trip or two a year, just the keep track (the Hodgsons have taught me)--but
psychologically the very fact of the annuity gives such assurance. Similarly
for Aldington. If I seem sometimes a little harsh on him, nevertheless I do
feel sorry for him, and life has not been altogether kind; despite the kicks in
the shin he has given, he has had enough in return. On most matters we would
no doubt get along well, except possibly for a little jealousy on his part re
Hilda.

Saillet is ridiculous, even though as you said the credit in the
book did not perhaps really go sufficiently to Adrienne. Adrienne was a genius
in her way; Sylvia was the world's handmaiden. But Sylvia was writing for a
special audience, and I do not really think that an emphasis on Adrienne really
belonged in the memoirs about Joyce (that is what they really were). A spiritual
autobiography by Sylvia (which she is really incapable of writing) would have
Adrienne dead central, for she was husband and wife, brother and sister, mother
and father, and priest and rabbi to Sylvia. I do suspect however that the
story of the bookshop, and her manner of telling, would be less appealing to a
French audience than to a foreign one. Just as I could imagine a Frenchman
being perhaps interested in an account of Frances Steloff and her New York shop,
while I should find it boring.

As to Lolita, you know perfectly well that Sylvia has loyalties but
no taste; her only desire is to be a little avant guard when some one has
pointed the way. (She is like Harriet Monro; both are schoolteachers by nature,
but pretending to be on holiday.) I suspect Lolita is probably funnier to

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

Americans than to anyone else, since it is a parody of so much that goes on in the mass medias in the way of youth and sex. That is why Bardot is so popular here, and Shirley Temple was; why Errol Flynn in becoming American wanted always fourteen year olds. The scene in which Lolita seduces her stepfather is funny only if you know what is being parodied; so is the narration of the attempt of the stepfather to kill his wife. The book is too long and becomes boring however. As to Malcolm, here we have a kind of brutal humor, highly moral at the same time it is decadent. It is beatnik in dinner jacket. The line is from the tall tales of the frontier to Thornton Wilder's Heaven's My Destination and West's Miss Lonelyhearts. Again it probably needs local reference, just as the status jittering of England's angry ephoebes requires knowing what has happened to British class structure.

Yes, Marianne's speech is affected. One cannot speak with her without knowing that she has had a stroke. But it is better that she keep on going rather than to grow senile with her colored feathers and bits of stone.

Many thanks for the copy of the *Armada*. Leslie brought it up when we were together, saying that it was the most wonderful book he had read in years, etc. And that he had not sent it to you because he knew everyone would. He too got it for Christmas. A copy of his own book was at home for me last night when I got to the house. Yours will have arrived I hope.

Lethbridge's letter was a delight as always. I shared with Susan, who delights in his accounts as I do, really is a sort of Motson in his ability find arrowheads wherever he stoops down (figuratively speaking). His letters are brilliant accounts of egoism which, from a distance, can only be attractive. This Friday I am going to hear Glynn talk on his New Hampshire find (about which I sent you the article) and had hoped you would be over. You would hate the weather here now (20 degrees and sleetin). Someday we must have Lethbridge look at it.

Islay's account of the new cardinals certainly makes him a bird lover. He describes the affair wonderfully, but I really do think that after Kenneth dies, Islay will make a spiritual contract with Hemmick. I can never be sure of Scots like Kenneth and Uncle Norman; they like to toy, but not too-toy-yea.

Robert's letter was sad as always. There is always the temptation to cuddle him because of his intense loneliness, except that in instances like this it would be disasterous for him. You are handling the situation exactly right. I'll see that it's kept on, if the situation isn't stabilized. I fear it will never be.

Am much impressed by what seems to be the increased maturity of Patrick's letters; altho still "literary" the tone is different, not kittenish, not like a character from Jane Austin. I think it may be really having a job. He is right to stay away from the states for a few years more. Perhaps it is right to settle in in Paris. I think you have helped him.

Edith's attacks worry me as before, but I simply don't know what to suggest. With anyone else I should suggest talks with a psychiatrist, but she has her confessor of course. (Does it strike you, he plays an increasingly lesser role? Osbert's letter was kind but spiritless. Cole's was violent in her special way. What a girl!)

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

Viola Jordan's letter was a little better written than before, but she obviously is going through hell. Oh dear!

An answer to my letter to Aurelia Hodgson has come in, and I shall save this until tomorrow so that my secretary can make a copy of it to enclose. Naturally I am glad for the town's sake that the wax paper factory still thrives, but don't quite see on what they are living without her salary coming in. Obviously because he is so nearly bedridden she feels she can't get away. Why don't I take an extra thousand and send it out to her? This means three thousand all told for the year, and with country produce, almost no rent etc., I daresay they can exist on this. Please instruct. There is plenty in the savings account, and so no need for you to send over anything additional. I fear for them the cost of drugs etc., although I hope she still remembers that I assured her we would take care of any actual hospitalization. If only he were an American citizen (which he joyously is not! even despite Victoria's death) he would be getting an old age pension here.

Our guest last night was the director of the George Eastman Museum in Rochester. The chief collection of everything connected with photography, in the States. He has new projects for buildings etc, projects and the like, and wanted me to vet them. I did, between sniffles.

All love,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

13 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

I don't know. I may possibly be over the hump with my cold, but the weekend was absolutely hopeless, after our guest had gone. Monday I went home for lunch and lay prostrate all afternoon and evening--a rare thing for me to do. I have munched pills until I am dizzy, but I daresay they have helped. Yes, I really do think I am a little over it. But thank God you weren't here, either to receive it as a gift from me or others--the thing is widespread. And the weather has been foul: sleet and snow and cold in the low twenties and under.

My ill health and disposition was not helped by having to rush through Hilda's galleys, although I must say the quality of the book was a great strength. It seemed to me I found more than the usual number of errors, but the editor sounds amiable over the phone. I sent the galleys back today, several days late. But I told him I could not help an act of God in the manifestation of nasal drip and a hacking cough!

Your own letters were a joy as always. I really am glad you liked Victoria R., and hope you were touched by Rafe Hodgson's inscription. I had a nice letter from Sylvia, for which I am grateful. I may write her to do some scouting. My guest on the weekend from Rochester said there was a huge Victor Hugo sale going on in Paris, and advertised in it were a number of his gouaches. He was interested in Hugo's photography, examples of which were also for sale. Most of Hugo's paintings went to the Sorbonne I believe. I wonder what one in this sale (not an auction) would fetch. I promised to send me the name of the dealer, and perhaps he will. Apparently a big catalogue put out by some well known Paris dealer.

No, poor Sylvia, there was no plot for Ellman to bring out his book to publicize on her publicity! One does not write and even get set in type a book of 850 pages on short notice. In fact the exhibition in Paris, although noticed in the States, hardly created a stir; and I have seen no notices of the present Rochester show in her honor. No one knew when she actually would sell the papers, until late summer. I was sent the book in early September at the latest. Ellman is a former student of mine, who also worked for me in London after I got him transferred to my office so that he could get to England. Hilda gave him a letter to Mrs Yeats, I wangled him a mission to Ireland, and he got started on the two Yeats books which gave him his reputation. This was a natural follow up. The book is a good one, as nearly definitive as one could want at this time. As for Sylvia, you will remember that I told you the Joyce material was her center, but she didn't really discover him, help him though she did. Now that the mss are in Rochester, she will have only his ghost to own; and the world will be full of plots. She lives in that world of pre-war, and now that she will be concentrating on her own papers it will be worse. But I love her just the same and will help her in any way I can.

I shall be curious to see Romaine's memoirs, if you send them along.

Let me know about the thousand for Hodgson. Am I right in thinking you have already given 3000 to Horace for this year? If so do you think 2000 more would be sufficient. I should think so, especially if my plans work out to get him the 5000 award. Anyhow it would carry him to the end of 1960, or let him take the first term off from Sarah Lawrence. I find it hard to estimate,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

but in case of sickness one could send more. This time I don't think they
plan to take it to use on a trip abroad.

Don't know what to say about the punctuation for RUAN. I am afraid
you will have to fight it out with Helen as editor on your side, even though
she is a little afraid of you. The trouble is that the good editor at Pantheon
in New York is also a European like Helen (rather in the Walter manner) and so
of course cannot follow your punctuation as sacredly as you want. I alas am
out of the picture for reasons of sloppiness, since it was I who have altered
the punctuation (as little as possible it is true, but all the same altered it)
to conform with modern usage as the American public uses it. I suppose the
difficulty lies in the fact that I punctuate really in the Shakespearean and
Elizabethan rhetorical manner, whereas you (despite your interest in the period)
really depend upon the 18th century rationalism put on to the system by Dr
Johnson and his school of schoolmasters. I really don't know what the answer
will be to your problem, but I am sure that Helen will be much more compliant
than any other American publishing house would be. My own feeling is simply
not to want to upset you again as the state of the earlier books has done. Our
relationship is much too precious to risk in this way.

The Masefield situation sounds incredible; but I suspect it is one of
those cases in which one cannot really interfere, Mrs M being what she is.

Susan went off to a flower school in New York for three days, and returns
tomorrow. I have been so busy with Hilda's manuscript etc that I could hardly
have been able to snuffle pleasantries had she been here. I did take Mrs
Bennett last night to hear Artur Rubenstein play, but I turned down a command
invitation from the Rubensteins for a little party afterwards. I explained to
his daughter that her father would behead me if he saw me coming toward him
with a handkerchief to my nose. But then, as I said, maybe I should be more
comfortable if he did!

All love,
Norman

Tell Elsie how much we enjoyed her card!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

16 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

Susan came back from New York with the beginnings of a new cold, first intestinal and now settled into full nose and cough again. It is wretched luck for her, and we cancelled plans to go to a dance last night, and I have given away our theatre tickets for tonight. Fortunately my own cold seems a little better, though hardly over with. I wish I didn't have to drive to Gardner tomorrow, but I really must. Susan must not go, of course.

I did go last night however to the Conn. Archaeological Society's meeting where Frank Glynn spoke of additional evidence in regard to the New Hampshire site about which I sent you the Saturday Evening Post article. It seems they now have a stone wall pattern which cannot be New England, and which with evidence of brick etc is thought (by Glynn and Lethbridge and a few others) to indicate a Celtic origin probably of 1500 B.C. I must say the pictures of the place are quite extraordinary, and we really must see it when you are over in the spring. Glynn spoke of you to me, and in his talk quoted Lethbridge several times. I have a tourist folder for the place which I will send you with the next batch of surface material.

No, by no means send back the Murdock article. Nor the science fiction bibliography from the meeting in Chicago I went to. I sent them only for your curiosity, and I have a duplicate of the s.f. list.

The Romaine Brooks memoirs sound formidable. One becomes worried about Margery's husband, although I suppose he cannot last forever. The important thing for her is that she will have been married. Don't let Helen's worry over RUAN bother you; one gets such things done as one gets them done.

I gather Yale is and will be in a tizzy, since the news has broken that eleven students have been expelled for "entertaining" a 14 year old girl frequently in their rooms. Her father, a Hamden doctor, is said to be suing Yale, though this seems unlikely. I suppose this is the influence of Lolita.

Have been spending the day correcting student papers, quite the dullest part of teaching. Sometimes I feel that this batch never will get done. My powers of empathy to their point of view does not gain by my stuffed nose.

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

24 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

Susan and I both begin to recover from our colds, but now the flu begins to make itself felt in the environs and we must see whether or not we have become immune. I certainly hope so. This has been very rough going indeed. The weather has been grey, cold, and generally unpleasant, which has hardly helped the spiritual ambiente. How thankful you should be that you did not come over as originally planned. You would have been inagony.

I went to New York Tuesday and spent the morning with the Grove Press editors on Hilda's novel. The galleys were rather unusually full of errors, which makes me a little apprehensive at the statement there will not be time for me to see page proof. The publication date is set for April 27th. Who knows, you may both be over here then. After all the haggling and approaches from many directions, it was agreed by them that the title page should contain "(A Madrigal)" which was a true concession, and really won only, I feel sure, by Hilda's own letter to Grove. I went over the jacket material, correcting several mistakes, and I hope keeping the tone within respectability. They are really very agreeable to deal with. The design for the jacket is handsome, but the encompassing photograph of an empty beach with a wave rolling up is a little obscure symbolically to me. I daresay the beach and life are about to be filled (or lived). However it is handsome, and in good taste. No one will mistake it for a juvenile, by the presence of a crocodile.

I had had a luncheon engagement with an editor from New Directions, on Pound matters, but he quite stood me up. After a half hour's waiting at the Yale Club I called his office, and they said, yes it was on his pad, he would be coming. Ten minutes later they called again in horror to say he had forgotten and gone out with someone else. He called at eleven-fifteen that night, when I was back from the symphony (a new composition for harpsichord and full orchestra, by a local friend), full of anguish and wanting to make amends by coming to New Haven for a talk. This would have been too much to give up two days, so we finally settled everything (about the text of an anthology Pound has done with his little Texas goose girl) by phone two days later.

Carlebach, the antiquities dealer in New York, had been anxious for me to see several esquimaux ivory carvings he had, so I went up after lunch. I bought one rather curious and intriguing ivory of a couple--quite small, and mysterious. One piece was attractive but $650 dollars, really exorbitant especially when it did not sing to me. There was another sixty dollar carving of a man (probably west coast), but really no better than one or two I have, and nothing to compare with my Christmas gifts from Spinks. (I have never known you to pick a lemon!)

Many thanks for the copy of Goodsir's ARCTIC VOYAGE which is in from Maggs. A nice presentation copy from the author apparently to a nephew.

Thursday night we went to the theatre to see the opening night of a play written by a former student of mine whom I taught exclusively in writing some years ago. (He did nothing but this for his last year and a half.) He was always commercial, but with a flare. This was a very free adaptation of a novel written by the loggy German-Swiss novelist playwright, whose name I forget. (D------). This was called *The Deadly Game*, and is to be taken only as entertainment. I had an interesting hour and a half at tea later with the author, going over my impressions. (I mean James Yaffe, author of the play.) It may go in New York, one doesn't know.

Did I tell you that the Roger Shattuck who wrote *The Banquet Years*, given you by Edith at Christmas, was also a former student of mine? I have not read the book, but I am told it is good. He had a good mind, though not a profound one.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

I notice that your friend Erich White spoke of having missed getting Hilda's *Iphigenia in Aulis*, and *What Do I Love* out of a bookseller's catalogue. I rather think I have an extra copy or two of the latter. Do you want me to send it to him? I have just splurged and bought two storage cabinets (metal) for the cellar, which will be a godsend and mean I can pick the place up. I wanted especially to have a dry spot to put the various duplicate books where I could get at them. These are more efficient under the circumstances than bookcases. You will see them, and a filing cabinet I bought also for the cellar in which to store my boyhood relics given over to me by my mother before she went to the hospital. I shall probably charge the account for the cases, as being in the line of duty.

I forget whether I wrote you after seeing my mother last Sunday. She was very much weaker, and although she recognized me her conversation could not really be followed by me even out of compassion, it wandered so. I stayed only fifteen minutes--a short stay for a three hour drive up and another three hours back. Susan was so truly ill she could not go. My cold was wearing, but at least tolerable. I did not kiss my mother, for the sake of germs; but perhaps it would have been the kindest gift.

I was absolutely charmed by the F. ----? who has gone out to Lebanon as a governess. Who is she? A book which retained her freshness of impression and her oddities of idiom would be irresistible. But some editor would come along and ruin whatever she did.

Am sending along a few clippings and oddments by surface. Only return if I indicate by a note.

You are of course quite right about not trying to act as deckhands on any boat small or large. You and I can be cabin boys together, but not deckhands. Ethel certainly ought not to be put in a position of not seeming to carry her end. I think actually you *could* do it, but this is a different question from the sensible one of *why*.

Glad to have the West African books. They will be part of the picture.

Speaking of pictures, I finally got the catalogue with the books, autographs and paintings by Victor Hugo, which Georges Heilbrun (a bookseller in Paris) is selling. The paintings are of course very rare since he left all of this sort of thing to the Bibliothèque Nationale. There is one very handsome (judging from the illustration) in sepia of the old city hall at Moselle, but the price (325.000 francs) (old style) seems huge. I can never reckon french currency old or new style, so I really don't know what I'm saying. Another depia "En détresse" did not seem to have any price. A design of a star in ink, at 25.000 seemed outrageous. Do you think I should ask Sylvia to look at the Moselle? I have no idea what the price means.

Lizzie came to dinner Thursday night and talked very sensibly about her plans for working and living when she is allowed to leave the Institute. One keeps ones fingers crossed, but for the last month or so one could hardly recognize her as the same person. Her sister has the same reaction. There will be relapses of course, but a year ago one would never have believed the present situation to be possible. Little Sue has just come back from four days in the hospital having a salivary gland removed. They wanted it done before the birth of her child in March.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

27 January 1960

Dearest Fido,

The colds, fortunately, are much better. Have not yet taken my flu shot, but my secretary is making an appointment for me. We are told we are certain to have at the least a mild epidemic.

Very little to report since my last. I am pleased Hilda liked the prize, and not surprised especially at this time of year that she speaks of a change. It would not be smart I think to put in a lift at Kenwin; nothing would be added to the value of the house, and it would be much cheaper to rent something reasonably one level elsewhere--say along the Lake at Lugano, or a period at a hotel which actually had a lift. I still hope of course that she will try a trip to the States this spring, and that when she does come she will do as all of us do, and have a check up. Something might well be done to improve the situation with the leg; at least one would have tried. I would say New Haven as a place for checking up, since the hospital and doctors are good, and naturally it would be most convenient for me to see her regularly. BUT I do think that the two or three big hospitals in New York can call on a wider group of specialists, and I have the greatest confidence in Prutting as a g.p. So I think does Hilda, and this is 3/4 of everything. If some protracted treatment is indicated after the New York consultations, then New Haven might be an excellent place indeed for whatever therapy is prescribed. If Hilda will come over, why not let me make an appointment with Prutting and go over the arrangements with him. This would be easier than any involved correspondence.

I must say that transistor radios are excellent. I gave Susan a little one for the bedroom, two Christmases ago, and it has proved excellent.

Sorry about Romaine's memoirs. But in manuscripts of this sort, everything rests in the tone and the eye; one can be pleasant and significant as a person. These are not the same thing as being a writer.

The Yale saga continues to intrigue the public, with many contra dictionary stories naturally circulating. I need to get it straightened out, and then will write. The whole thing seems essentially to be pre-public in tone. I have never read Durrell's *Olympia Press things*.

I will send an extra thousand to the Hodgsons, but the Gregories had perhaps best wait until I see their letter about the scholarship for the grandson. Will you send it? I can return it to you. But do not get involved in so long a project as the education of this and (necessarily by pre-emptive) other grandchildren of Joanna and possibly PaTrick. At least without considerable thought. At 12 most boys are at day schools, and the father has always been said by Horace to be wealthy. My intention was to help Horace himself because of his physical condition.

The *Transatlantic Smiths* came in this morning's mail. Thank you. And I am not sure I thanked for *Years with Ross*. Read in the TLS an ad for *Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt*, by R.T.Rundle Clark, published by Thames Hudson for Hilda?

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

2 February 1960

Dearest Fido,

I don't know; I think perhaps I may have been catching up just a little bit. I hope so. I certainly need to. At any rate, let me catch up a bit more, and as usual start with the memoranda. I will write socially later. Or is there anything really social these days, for either you or me. It is the sealing season, and the dogs are hungry.

Many thanks for the Mattingly, *Defense of the Armada*.

The 35 letters from D.R. to Bernice Elliott have come and have been paid for. Presumably you know her, since she talks constantly (no, I mean D.R. talks constantly) of L&L and Herring to her, urging her to contribute etc. The letters are really very good as a whole, and D.R. emerges as a kind warm person, a persona of protector rather different from what some of the other letters to contemporaries show. I had one of those to Bernice Elliott copied, thinking you might like to read it, especially since it gives literary advice and shows how she herself presumably wrote. I had thought to save the correspondence for you to read when you came over, before giving over to Yale in your name. Or don't you care. I will do as you say. Hilda might be interested in the copy; then destroy, I kept a copy for myself.

Your descriptions of Kusnacht's holes, in your letter of the 25th, sounded ghastly. I do think Hilda, quite understandably, laments the mid-winter Swiss climate. So do the Swiss! Except possibly Elsie. Hope Joan is not holing up. But I fancy the winter gets her down a little too. Send along in France it was Ida Treat. Always pleasant to have, and one can pass on when finished.

I have written the boys in New York. And to tell them that the Ghandara show is now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, with a new catalogue etc. I suspect they will want to see it, especially Islay since it contains several pieces from the Boston neighborhood.

I am excited about Gough's appointment at Ankara. We shall have to go out, like a school inspection unit. I think this will be what he needs firmly to establish himself in material for a significant book. You have helped him toward this, and should feel satisfaction. I wag my tail in your honor.

I do hope you see George when you get over. Possibly see the doctor. I don't know. I worry about his summer, a little, with the wrong sister coming over. But I suppose she can cook, at least.

I took my flu shot last Friday. Felt a bit groggy that night, but fine ever since.

Your new English writers interest me very much. Would four or five give me an idea? They sound natural, and in a way of course even rock n roll is natural. Or more natural. I should have an idea of your group, I think.

No I didn't see Patrick Moore on history, science, and fiction. Do send.

Yours of the 29th in this afternoon. I will phone around and get the dope on Collingwood tomorrow. But I am sure no one would accuse you, if you quote as from Oxford. I speak an old Oxonian.

It is snowing, and after six. I must run.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

7 February 1960

Dearest Fido,

Another Sunday and the chance to work at my office desk. Fortunately we have no engagements today except that Lizzie and Susan-and-family will both be home for supper. Last week was my time for going to Gardner. Of course when I do the entire day is taken up. Tuesday morning I have an editorial meeting for the *New England Galaxy* in Boston at eleven. This is too early to drive up for on that day, nor can I get there by train on time. So I shall drive tomorrow afternoon, and go by way of Gardner. That will mean I do not have to give up next weekend either. I needn't say I have more than enough to do here. And having just cadged some 3-shelf-contraptions to go on top of several bookcases in the office, I need to rearrange what I have. Fortunately it gives me space to put all the Vistorian boy-thrillers together. Better wait until after your next visit, however, before you start to buy en masse. Any first-rate Hentys or Ballentynes can be taken, however, even if they seem expensive. This always happens at a certain stage of bringing a collection together.

Went to the theatre Thursday night to see the opening of a translation of Camus' *Caligula*, by my friend Justin O'Brien. As a spectacle it was superb, very bravura, and at curtain calls the entire cast burst into applause when the leading man, a British actor, Kenneth Haigh, took his first bow. An early Camus, it extrapolates everything he has to say, and is a damningly bitter commentary on contemporary life in the late 30's--not too different in many ways from now. As a thing in itself, however, it suffers, but only in such a way as to keep it from being great as well as significant.

Your various yellow envelopes, this time, chiefly relating to Christmas checks, are in. I howled with glee at Hilda's description of the secret goings on behind the arras, at Lady Williams party. I am so grateful always for having had the chance to be at Kusnacht. I feel like an honorary alumnus.

George's condition still alarms me, even if he feels relieved from time to time. One does suspect an amoebic dysentery, but there shouldn't be any better place for this than the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases. At least it used to be the very best in the world. Some of his difficulty of course comes from diet, the usual result of too much fried things for a single person, and not enough balance. But even this would only cover the basic difficulty. Too bad one can't tempt him to Prutting and the States, even if only for a short time.

I was much touched by the 10/ notes to permit Grizel Reith to visit Faith. Naturally it is a gift to Faith, and I should think the best possible one, perhaps the only gift except death; but I suspect that G.R. also enjoys getting out, and feeling that she is useful. How much we need to feel this as we grow older.

Aldington does write a good letter!

I was taken back many decades by Dorothea Latham's account of trying for the library job, feeling that one was too old for it, but especially the apparent difference of attitude in regard to what is or is not suitable ladlylike

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

for a person in her circumstance. It is this attitude, partly, which the
young Englishmen cannot understand. And they become angry because they cannot
understand, and because it very probably is stupid even when understood.

Have enjoyed the Greenland, letters. Looking at the picture on the
Bastiensens' card made me homesick. Perhaps Greenland is my Scilly. I am
serious. Chris's letter showed him a's boyish and attractive as ever.

Don't you think you really ought to run over to Locarno before you
go to England? It might be important in regard to Najedine's manuscript, and
having the right slant on the other memoirs. Helen is, I know, quite upset
about the problem of punctuating any manuscripts for the American audience. I
suppose it is difficult for her to understand, being European rather than British,
your sense of missionarizing. And think she would understand this better if she
actually did live in England, or in English colonies elsewhere (a last stronghold
I suspect now). And having been a publisher only in Italy, France and the States,
I doubt that she would grasp the particular p.a. angles which are indeed always
important, but not so much in professional publishing circles. I think if you
could explain the matter to her personally--not in terms of what is right or
wrong for punctuation, this varies from age to age, and person to person,--
but in terms of what you call putting a halt to American slackness, she will
see what you mean.

I was intrigued by Martita's about her school mistress. M must be
undergoing some sort of psychic malaise, and has a little (I think) for the time
being, lost her nerve.

The letter about the scholarship for Horace's grandchild has not yet
come. I will put off that topic, and Leslie's need until the next letter.

I adore your new science fiction suitor, "Mr. W. Russell." Have you
any guesses as to what the "W" stands for. "Wistfull"?

A good letter, as always, from Reresby. How was Sachie's Japan book?

O.B. seems really to have gotten back into the swing of things. THANKS

TO YOU!

Our colds now seem reasonably over, and since they were not the flu
we must still see whether we fall victims to that. Susan had her shot yesterday.
I don't know, but the general scheme here seems to be to wait for shots until
you can see the white in the eyes of the germs.

Have checked on the propriety of quoting the *Oxford History of Roman
Britain*, and am told that it is highly respectable and even admired. At any rate
it is both safe and convenient as a reference. The latter being of some importance.

Winter is not quite gone. I lift my eyes to look out the window and see
that it is snowing. This will not please the workmen who are now busy putting in
a system of drywells at Goodrich Street. Our cellar has always been inch-deep after
heavy and quick rains. Now after twenty years, the situation became such that
the garage floor was a couple of inches deep in mucky water backed up from the
drain. Rooters and construction men all expressed bewilderment. Finally we decided
to really see what had happened. The construction men originally just put pipes
down to rock, and of course when the ground was saturated it went back to the house.
It makes one weep. But better to have it fixed, and see if this will help.

You asked what school was followed in Lizzie's treatment. It is does not
seem particularly affiliated to a school so far as the principles of diagnosis are

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

concerned, although its character has changed from time to time as the staff
shifts. On the whole it would probably be low-church Freudian, but more
expressed through therapy and indirect analysis than through the formality
which Freud insisted on. A good deal depends on the personality of the patient,
and what he or she will respond to. Some attention is paid to group therapy
on the part of the patients, especially because the average patient is under
thirty, and societal behavior is so often a complicating factor in the original
psychosis. The Yale Institute spends a great deal more time with the families
of the patients than is common here, or I should imagine abroad. This is on the
basis that, again, the societal relationships involve the parents and siblings,
who must at least understand, question themselves and their own relationships
etc. For example, if Joan were a patient here, and it was possible, both Ethel
and her husband would be asked to take an hour a week apiece. That it has helped
in Lizzie's case goes without saying. I presume it depends a good deal on circum-
stances.

I imagine I must have forgotten a good deal, but I must at least get this
off to you.

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

7 February 1960

Dearest Fido,

A second letter in case you want to show the first to Hilda,
or something should make her feel you are holding back.

It is never easy for me to be sure I can distinguish between what she says she wants, and what she may actually want. But this of course is true for everyone, and I am sure that you find the same problem with her and with me in turn. And in anyone's relationship toward her, or toward anyone, one is always torn between a sense of duty and the longing to escape from it. I know you feel this dialectal pull, and you have certainly done more for her than you had any reason (even right) to expect you would have to do when you first joined with her. The problem I presume is not an easy one for her any more than it is for us, in knowing whether what we say is what we truly mean, and this pressure is what you mean when you say that one might crack up and need analysis if the issue became too clear. Perhaps it is not always necessary for us--she, included--really to have to decide definitively between what we ought to want and what we really do want.

Such a preamble serves chiefly to let you read my summary of the
situation as though you were turning your glass on me:

I still believe that nowhere else will Hilda find a society into
which she can fit so well as she does into the life at Brunner's. She is a kind
of queen there, not only by force of her intellectual and artistic powers but also
because she is superior (actually) in nervous stability, and because by now she
is an old inhabitant, being able to make reference to earlier reigns. All sorts
of maddening things happen: Romanas come into the room, people fall down stairs
or bring turtles to supper, the household chamberlain is negligent, the ladies in
waiting go into sulks. But things happen, and there are people to talk to, and
things about which to talk when she writes or when she sees Heydt. There is the
t.v. set within the same building. Even if toenails are not properly cut there
are at least nurses (ostensibly for others but conveniently for one self. All
this has really become a part of Hilda's life, and she craves it in the same way
that you crave having people come to you, or going to them. She wants to be alone
too, as you do, in order to write, as you do, but not for long spells, not for
always. It even becomes important for her to be kept from writing when an analyst
would tell her that she does not really want to write. All this is natural enough,
certainly not alarming.

What could she substitute for it elsewhere? Nothing at Kenwin, nothing
really in any of the hotels. Nothing certainly in New York especially in the
summer. Perdita will be on Long Island and incredibly busy as one always with
a new child, with four children in all. We know the situation in this foous. It
is no good talking about right or wrong in this any more than in psychiatry.
Perdita will not sacrifice her family to her mother, and in fact could not do so
without causing psychiatric repercussions that would be unhappy for the stable
development of the children. She did not have a happy childhood, and she wants
them to be luckier.

I would certainly be willing to give up three days of the week, or

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

what would amount to half the summer, making day trips to New York to see her. But with Perdita on Long Island, I do not know what Hilda would have for the rest of the time, since she would be without all the coming and going on which she depends.

I do think it would be a good thing for her if Prutting could give her a checkup, but this would not take more than a fortnight at the most. My own guess is that it would be only for two or three days while he took tests. For we must not beguile ourselves with the idea that anything can be done for her hip. At her age, with her fragile physique and bony structure, and medical as well as psychiatric history, they simply would not operate again to give her a false hip joint. Nor would she be likely to accommodate herself to it. So far as her rheumatism is concerned, Prutting will of course tell her she needs a warmer climate and a dryer one. But of what good is this if one is alone and unhappy?

After she has finished this checkup and got her pills etc., she could of course come to New Haven for the three or more months you speak of leaving her here, and I myself would be happy to take care of her. She could come to stay at our place at the shore, which is one-leveled; but my own guess is that she would not want to do this, and would find Justus and the new baby (who certainly will be there a lot) getting on her nerves. And I can't say we would have no other guests for dinner or the evening during the three summer months, for she would know that was unusual. The summer hotel at Pine Orchard which I showed the two of you as a possibility for her has been sold and torn down. The only hotel would be one in the center of New Haven. Here there would be an elevator, and she could take taxis to the movie theatres and the museums. But even this will be difficult if she is not willing to have a personal maid; and if she is not, then I think she must understand that it is impossible for you to be her maid. Or me. Or Perdita. Our help is of a different sort.

When I have urged her coming across it was with the idea of a two to three week stay, and I still think this is the best plan, and for as long as is likely to work out. I think if it were for that long (and it out to come in April or May at the latest, while New York is still tolerable) there is no reason why you should come with her, but perhaps put your own flip over off until October or November. Surely there is some nurse at Brunner's whom he would let go on her holidays, and whose expenses Hilda could pay. There is no reason why she herself should not pay, for this not touching her American funds is only a squirrellish fetish. I will arrange with Prutting for a period of examinations, and go into town the two or three times a week to see her. Also arrange for others whom she might like to meet. If she came in early April there would be the book just out. Perdita would certainly be agreeable altho she has begged both you and me to arrange Hilda's visit before rather than after the birth of the baby. I should have persisted if I had known that you did not want to be with Hilda on trips of this sort (there is never a question of your having to come to the States to live; neither will Hilda or should she for the time being; we take care of what comes when it comes.) Just say flatly to yourself and to us that you will not come with her, and you yourself as well as the situation will be eased. Hilda can be put on the plane with her nurse by Heydt, and met by me. She and her nurse can be put back on the plane by me, and met by Heydt in Zurich. Then Hilda will have what she needs, and should have, a brief break and change of

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

scenery from Brunner's. After all it is three years and more without a break away from a single room or a plot of ground. This need is what makes Heydt so important by being her chauffeur and her tit-tatter. But once she has had the break she will have things to tell to Joan, to Herf, to the nurses and to Heydt.

I am interested in Brunner's new small apartments. Perhaps Hilda would like to take one, and if this is true she ought to sign up for a good one now. Even though she only moves in later. My only fear is her not having the social life that the Veronica gives her, even though she might laugh at this way of expressing it. And she certainly ought not to give up her present room if she stays at Veronica. But why think of the situation as one in which she must commit herself permanently to Switzerland, any more than your committing yourself permanently to Kenwin. One does what is necessary at the time.

Perhaps some money might be wasted in a lease on one of Brunner's new flats, but the importance of money is so that one can be without constant worry, or at least have the alleviations. I am not urging you to put more money into her, but that she should spend some of her own if this is necessary.

I care very much what happens to her, as you do; just as I care very much about what happens to you. I could not be your psychiatrist, which is why I wish that Turtle were alive for you to talk with. So that you could meet the issue more squarely with a definition of the obligation you are not sure whether you want or do not want to maintain. God knows it is not an easy situation you are in, or I should say God and I both know for good reasons. Only once you have made up your mind you can take it more easily in your stride.

With more love than I can adequately express

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

13 February 1960

Dearest Fido,

I enclose my second letter about the award, so that you
can be au courant in case of any telephone conversations. I am of
course on tenterhooks to know what her and your decision will be. You
will notice that I have left you out of any suggestions, not because
I don't want to rub noses with you but lest you feel I am pushing you
to bring her. I do think Joan might work out, but one never knows.

I enclose the letter from the Hodgsons in response to my
letter enclosing the check. I don't think I sent you a carbon of my
letter to them, but I tried to phrase it in such a way that your gift
did not seem like the weekly dole. As to Thomas Story, I am not quite
sure what this is all about, but I had it copied for you too. I have the
originals so do not return. I must try to write them oftener. I think
I shall see if I can persuade him to try an electric blanket. The important
thing is the lightened load on the body.

Your letter of the 7th with the list came a little more slowly
than usual, and I am a little slow in answering it. But of course there are
really no questions. You see, quite unusually for such circumstances, the
reading of your letters from these various persons has made me almost a
familiar of theirs, and I think I know their pace and what is needed. Per-
haps Dorothy Richards is the exception, but of course I have followed and
can always keep track as through Harvard colleagues of his. He probably
gets seventeen to twenty thousand a year from Harvard, quite apart from
his special fees and whatever he earns from his books (I do not count the
poetry among them). But of course taxes take much, and so do expenses like
those they have met lately.

Is there any point in filing here duplicates of any lists you
have given Philip or Kenneth, just in case something happens to them shortly
after anything might conceivably happen to you. The English group of course
I know from correspondence, and since they are all pretty much my type I
suspect I could continue to keep up with a quick trip a year over. I leave
to your judgment.

Yes, I got Lady Vyyvan's ms, but have been so rushed I have not
been able to read it. At the moment am plowing through a 400 page book on
archetypal criticism of the Theban plays, Shakespeare, Cummings and Yeats--
a weird mixture but he seems to be carrying it off. Much to my surprise I
suspect I shall advise them to publish it. I do this sort of thing every
once in a while for publishers, as it keeps me in their good graces and favor
when I need something done for me. Harcourt Brace are after me to do a
section in an anthology on Lowell and Longfellow, for a fee of a thousand.
But nice as the money would be, I think I shall say no. If Hilda comes,
and if my mother lives or dies, etc etc, time will be precious for the
Hawthorne book, and the deadline for this is September 1st. I can't flip
over for Easter because of my mother and the fact that my brother may take
his first quick trip abroad since graduation from college in 1925. I believe
he wants to go to Rome, Florence, Venice. I hope he can. He is exhausted

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

from the daily strain in Gardner.

As to Planetary Journal, I suspect it is better to have Maggs sell, if they can. If it is above your head, I cannot compete; for in such matters my head reaches your knees.

Sorry not to have finished the Lady Vyvyan. When you tell me you are going, or shortly anyhow, I will flip over a comment to you. Stall her by saying I had said I was sending you my comments via Doris.

Have had my second flu shot. There is much about here, but I hope I shall escape.

All love. Wish I could have carved a valentine out of walrus tusk and brought you a bouquet of arctic flowers when I came to rub noses.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

21 February 1960

Dearest Fido,

Terribly sorry your letter to Kenwin couldn't have reached you before you got to Kusnacht, although I suppose Hilda was happy to be the first to give you the news of her award. I am delighted that you are pleased; for it is really a climax to all you have done for her over the years--a career that would have been impossible without your love and your care. You have done much for many people, but never more than for Hilda. So I am particularly pleased too that she is willing to come over without you, particularly since this frees you--as you wanted to be freed--to go your own way for once. However if you should want to come over with her, not so much for that reason but to see Perdita after the birth of her newest child, and get a swift run-over by Prutting, why not come for a week anyhow. The chief thing, and the happiest for you, is that if you do come it will be because you want to and not because you have to. She can be taken care of for the time she is here, and taken off and put on the plane.

I was amused and pleased that Hilda had, as you say, taken the award to be a "mystical summons to go to America", for if you saw my letter to her, it was this point which was my final card. Naturally I had expected some theatrics and delays. No doubt they will come, but now is she is committed, and we know she really wants to come. Three to four weeks is enough I think, for the moment, with perhaps a mid-winter Florida visit next season is this works out. Do not let her give up her present room at Kusnacht. I will get her a suite at the Stanhope, and she can have t.v. to amuse her. If you want to come, and decide to, I can get you a single there too, unless you want to be more independent and go to your old stamping ground. That is fine for you, but not for Hilda I think.

As to seat on the plane, I should think she would prefer to sit up until Shannon and then go to bed, but see if she can stay on the plane there and not have to leave. The best about sitting up at first is that one gets tired and can sleep afterwards.

Have gotten the *Billy Liar*, and ordered the Sillitoe, and will be interested in whatever you add to it as from London. You will die of jealousy when you learn that Michel Butor is to talk here on March 11th on "Le Roman et la Pèesie". I shall certainly try to go. Perhaps not the top of that school, but an interesting writer.

Because my mind still turns on the relationship between D.R. and Robbe Grillet, I think too of the book which Leon Edel is supposed to do, and wonder if it actually will be done or whether he does not have the heart to say no to Rose Odle. And so it occurs to me that perhaps Horace would be an excellent man to do it. In the letters from D.R. to Miss Elliott, I rather gather that she knew or at least had corresponded with Horace and Marya. He could do the thing awfully well, and we might be able to nurse two birds with one pound. What do you think. I could sound out Edel.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

22 February 1960

Dearest Fido,

Your handwritten letter of the 18th in this morning, and I am much relieved that you are at least safely in England. And with no strikes to keep you from getting to Doris. I have only one question: do you think there is any possibility of my getting a position at the Sesame? I should die happily if I could spend my declining years tapping reclining dames.

I really ought not to give you advice one way or the other about the boat. Certainly I am not going to say anything about the money, for if it gives you pleasure then the boat is its own excuse for costing. What does worry me a little, from experience, is the amount of energy and time that goes into the management of a boat: fixing this, adding that, feeling conscience-bound (and you would feel that way, being as Puritan as myself) that you must use it in order to keep your captain (another Elsie) busy and happy and useful, and a hand or two (like Italian maids) on the spot, and busy too. For a captain (like an Elsie) doesn't, if he's any good, want to confer on all matters with a Philip or even an Ethel. A good captain confers with the owner (as your Dada will have shown you). But perhaps I am only being selfish, without knowing it or meaning to be. For when my mother has died, and the Hawthorne is finished, I still hope we can see the east coast of Greenland, and go down the Mackenzie. And if you are able enough to hoist the yardarm on a ketch you are strong enough to sit on a bench on deck a steamer. No--really all I want is for you not to comlicate your life with more responsibilities.

Three yellows of old cards in today's mail, and two were here by the close of last week. I look at the cards with pleasure, and will see they are put in the right folders. Somehow I took a particular delight in seeing Rossler's face, and his wife's. They have been clear enough on their letters, but this is from a new angle. You did not mention their names on your list, but I should want to give them their little trips to Old Orchard--they have always been so grateful and so charming in their letters to you. Viola's letter seemed remarkably peaceful considering the hell she goes through.

Heydt's suggestion that he bring Hilda over might be worthwhile your accepting, since that is likely to be the roughest part of her visit. I am sure he will want to stay for the celebration so that you would not have to suffer through that unless you wanted to. You could, if you wanted to come over at all, be here after he left and then stay on, shipping Hilda back by air to be met by Heydt in Zürich. What delights me is knowing that the decision will be up to you, rather than the force of duty (that is, unless like most Puritans you prefer the burden of duty).

They are through digging for the dry well, which is now in -- altho the side lawn is still disarranged. Much rain in the past few days (fortunately not snow) and not a drop has come in the cellar. We pray that there has been a cure.

Dave & Doris and yachts Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

22 February 1960

Dearest Fido,

It is perfectly ridiculous to write you again only an hour or two after I had signed my name to another. But in the late morning mail (I had thought the mails would be closed on Washington's birthday) came two more yellow-bellies, and I wanted only to make my comment or two on them and let Mrs W file them. I will not post this until a day or two, however, lest you think me beserk.

I remain uneasy about Georges complaint, and am completely torn between me desire to let anyone be, and to take care of him. Alas, I fear it is not his own cooking which will make things better--in fact it may be the opposite, as Amy showed this summer. But oh dear, not a nursing home, I think. One cannot help remembering D.R. in her last days.

Jslay's letter aboard the Queen Lizzie was a delight. He and Kenneth do mix.

If you could not describe a leotard for Hilda, let me know. Or perhaps Joan already has.

It would be rather fun sometime to look up the dentist's wife from Julianehaab. Did I tell you I have to lecture twice more this spring on Greenland and Hudson Bay? I shall run out of ice before long.

Was amused at the letter from Collins, not having recognized your order as that from an author. But I imagine they stand in well with bookdealers, for not having tried to compete directly.

forgot to tell you that I blushed when the Patrick Moore Science and Fiction arrived. You did send it. I shall see if the Yale Library has, and if not turn this over to them. Unless you have other plans for it.

28 February 1960

Well, one can only start again, even after a longish delay. The week has been ghastly, for this is the time for recommending fellowship awards for next year. Since a superior committee actually does the awarding--except for 13,500 which we have exclusively for A.Studies, this means I must be careful in my letters of support for those whom our group selects as worthwhile. Hansen will be back in Denmark teaching by then. We are putting him up only for the registration fee that will be required when he finishes his dissertation. He will have to complete it at home. But he seems to be working hard and back on his feet again psychiatrically. No doubt he will spill over again some day, but not wetting my feet again.

And we have had to be out every night until last night when we simply said no. The others were not quite purely social however so we were a little helpless. This afternoon we must go to the Hotsons for tea, Miss Wedgewood being on exhibition for the weekend. She is pleasant and informed, however.

Your letter of the 20th was in early in the week, and am sorry not to have answered. I leave the matter of your coming or not coming entirely to you. If you did come it might be a good chance for you to slip away for a week and kennel in with the Hotsons at Maine. Heavens knows, Hilda will under-

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

stand how you must get this out of the way. And--if I may say so--
you will enjoy Maine more in June than you will in November. But all
depends upon when you get the boat of course. It seems to me you made a
good bargain with Heydt. And I feel sure they are an excellent risk in
terms of the chalet. Only I do know how difficult it is sometimes to
put up the colateral one's self in a case like this. Anyhow if Heydt
would come out with Hilda it would take care of the early and more
difficult days. After the event itself she would be in stride, and you
could come or not come as the case might be. It might still be a good
idea to take one of Brunner's nurses, and you could assure him that at
the most Hilda ought not to be away from Kusnacht for longer than four
weeks. The ten weeks you have been suggesting seems much too long for
her on this first outing since the fracture.

I hope this letter reaches you in time for the Sesame. If I
have a letter in tomorrow's mail I may risk one more London letter.

The royalty check is in from Pantheon. As from May 1st to October
31st. For GATE; $51.82; Beowulf, 58.09 (remarkable, in comparison, I
think); Fourteenth 185.25; Gandharan Art 295.12; Player's Boy, 74.52;
Roman Wall, 191.95. And for Hilda's Freud 26.51. I shall deposit in
the account for Hilda and in the one for yourself.

Two little queries, which I ought to hold until you are back at
Kenwin, but want to clear my desk. Among the books when I sorted in the
cellar was one of POEMS by Margaretta Schuyler. Inscribed with thanks to
you for making it possible. But I do not recall any letters from her to
you among the archives, and so do not place her. Also have just received
from you, or not too long ago, a wonderful Coronation Garland by one
Harrold Johnson, called THE VOICE OF ONE: Empire Lyric.

Saw the TLS was a little snippy about the new Penguin book on
*The Vikings*, written by Brøndsted, director of the Danish National Museum.
But I presume you should read and then. The review spoke also and
favorably of Sir Thomas Kendrick's History of the Vikings as the standard
work and only general history of the Vikings available. Do you know it. As
for myself I can surely read it in the library here. But it might be good
for you to tuck away.

Too bad Edith is not at the Sesame, but you should derive much
from the lounging lizards.

And much of course about Margaret's engagement. For an easy
jolly type able to get along with all sorts in a royal family, give me a
coxwain every time. They have to learn to adjust to a mixed crew, even tho
they sometimes successfully learn to call the stroke. And you can always
pitch a cox in the Thames afterwards. But there are indeed some interesting
speculations for a psychiatrist in her choice! I shall be interested to
learn the local reactions.

mc.

1960

Deares‡ Fido,

There is another Susan in the family, born last night at 10:30
apparently with great ease and rapidity. We have Justus with us, which is a
pleasure but sure to prove exhausting before the fortnight is up.

THis is nothing more than a note, since I must go home to take
him off Susan's hands (how complicated this is going to be since the new
Susan has a mother Susan and a grandmother Susan and a great grandmother
Susan) while she gets dinner prepared.

And there has been a full day of teaching, but with the wonderful
interlude of a visit from the boys. Both Islay and Kenneth looked better
than I have seen them for a long time, Kenneth perhaps the fresher of the two.
Susan being tied down by the boy, they lunched with me at Mory's and we had
an excellent visit altogether from eleven thirty until two. They then took a
cab to the house to see Susan who was to take them to the station in mid-
afternoon. I did so enjoy seeing them.

And enjoyed you cornucopia of a letter yeasterday, and again one
today. You may have missed the typewriter; I certainly missed the results
of your having one. But for all that I shall have to wait until tomorrow, or
possibly Saturday morning, after I have heard Butor.

All love as always. We all wished you might

have been with us at lunch.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

5 March 1960

Dearest Fido,

I am just beginning to shake free from the tyranny of the week, as well as of the weather. It began to snow Thursday noon, and before it stopped, some fourteen inches had piled up all roads and driveways. It was like being in an igloo. Fortunately being warned I had taken home a great mass of papers, so I could keep busy until late yesterday afternoon when the plows dug out the driveway to the garage. Fortunately too--my oldsmobile being in the garage to have the tail end of the body welded back to the frame, and the wheels straightened--only the ravages of the age, but done so that it can be in good shape when Hilda comes, the engine being as good as new--there was room for the plow to get into the garage and work the snow away from the door and finally into the streets. Now everything is beautiful but snarling in terms of traffic and the rest.

What I mind most at this busy season of the year is not having the chance for the daily letter to you. I always miss the points I wanted to ask, or the comments I wanted to make. For example, what the situation would be now for Masefield. Can Judith cope? Etc.

John telephoned the office from the hospital on Monday to announce Timothy's birth, and Susan phoned her from New York the next day. Pup was in excellent health and spirits, and said it had been the easiest birth so far. We sent flowers of course, but will probably not be able to see for a while yet.

Wednesday night Susan and I went to a small undergraduate honor society (of which I am an honorary member; honorary of the honoraries) to hear Islay's friend David Jeffreys give an illustrated talk on an eight day's tour of Greece. Islay had written me about him, and he came for an hour or two the next day to my office. Wants a book or two to be published, and to be friends (I should think). Handsome in Islay's way, and was rather interesting in terms of Roman gossip. His pictures were good tho not extraordinary or to be compared to Islay's; all in all it was more in the manner of the old-fashioned illustrated lectures one saw as a pup.

The boys are coming up on Thursday, as the only possible time! Tho I have an afternoon class, alas, and so there will be little more than luncheon together with Susan and myself. Life is too impossibly hectic, but I am really touched that they make this effort--a true effort.

Your various packages of letters come in. Did you mean I should subscribe to Jeffares REVIEW OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, of which you sent me a flyer? I had a letter from Jeffares asking me if I would do a 35000 word book for him on Eliot for the English market. Apparently most of this new series are to be on Americans and continentals, with the exception of Eliot and Graves, and will be done by Britishers. For some reason they must be ducking Our Tom. He spoke of C.P? Snow and Daiches as advisers, and am not sure what that means; but perhaps Sir Charles suggested my name. I asked when the deadline was and who would pay for what they called liberal quotations. We shall see. What do you think. The 35000 will be as a small book of course, not for the magazine.

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Was interested in Baillet's letter, about his publications of Adrienne. On the whole I should think better to publish the things. Sylvia is probably a little over finicky and possessive, tho she does have good judgment.

Have had a note or two about CLEA from England; there seems to be a mixed
response to it, although great respect of course for Durrell in general. It was
clever of you to spot BITTER LEMONS as the work of a real artist. Incidentally,
of course it is much too late to do anything about "(A Madrigal)", especially
after such a fight for it. Mr A and I would have agreed in the original
situation, but nothing could stop Hilda's natural feeling of love for the sub-
title. Calling the poem a madrigal will bother to purists, but make little
difference in the long run.

Should have apologized for not remembering that, after all, Prince
Philip's father's name was not Mountbatten at all, so the shift on the part of
the queen really is a triumph for the *Admiral* of all HE Sees.

I perhaps need to be brought up to date about Joan and her divorce. A
reference by Ethel to her being upset by "the letter from Caola" puzzled me.

The letters from Viola seem a little happier somehow, as though she
accepted her position a little more easily.

The clipping about Greenland was wonderfully interesting, and we must find
out about the institution of regular passenger air service being started this year,
especially between the coastal settlements. If so, this is our next move I think,
but probably not this coming summer, or so long as my mother lingers.

We saw the Hotsons last Sunday for tea.

6 March (Sunday morning)

(At this point I had to leave to go to the Harvard-Yale swimming meet, to which we were taking the mother of one of the supposed-to swimmers--he actually didn't-- a cousin of Susan, who came for over last night. She is a widow and very nice. yale won the meet, we entertained the mother and son for dinner, and her for over-night. I had expected the day would be devoted to her entertainment, but fortunately she had to return to New York at eleven, so I can get in some work before we have to go out to supper with the mother of our son-in-law who is up from New York for the day.)

Veronica Wedgewood was there for the weekend, and it was pleasant to see her again. Mary is filled with happiness and exultation over the reception of Leslie's book in England. She is a bit like Marya in her ego-centrism, but it is always forgivable. Both Susan and I were rather startled to see how much the area immediately around their cottage has grown up, and we were told that the field to the east of them is also to be subdivided into lots. This will detract from both the value and pleasure of their land, since the line is quite open between them. They had planted pine two years ago at my suggestion, just in front of their house, though of course it will be some years before the effect can be seen. Because spring is the only

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YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

time for planting, I suggested to Leslie that he inquire as to the cost of planting pines along the east line, and possibly continuing along the south line as well, thus at the same time providing a screen and also a kind of warning fence to small children that they are trespassing on private property if they come to play in the field. I hope you approve, if the cost is not too great. This is really an investment, but not perhaps one they would feel they could make. Their living room seemed much larger because they had gotten rid of that bulky piano and brought down from the attic a virginal that Mary had had made in England in the 20's by one of Dolmetsch's men. Apparently she adores it, but unfortunately it no longer works. I offered to have it put in shape and managed to discover a well-known expert in this field who makes old instruments, repairs them for the Metropolitan Museum Collection and Yale's etc., and lives in Stony Creek, just east of Branford. I was told he did not ordinarily touch any new instruments such as hers (altho I'm not sure of this now, for I find he makes them), but he said he would look at it. So Leslie took it over, but alas it turned out to be as the man warned me it might": American heat, and storage in the attic had so ruined it that it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to repair. I think Mary was a little disappointed, but as Leslie said, it will make a nice ornament. Of course I can ask what a new one would cost, but am not sure what I would think. I was also reminded--to my horror--that I had promised to pay for the illustrations to the WOODEN O but hadn't. I guess I must have expected to have Leslie remind me, since when we spoke of it first he had only a rough idea of what it would cost. Anyhow I have sent him a check for the necessary 150 dollars. You see how I do my best to be fide to fido.

By now of course you will be back at Kenwin, and know far more than I do about plans for Hilda's visit. I have suggested to her that since she is over on this side, why wouldn't it be a good idea to have Prutting see if he has any tips for her rheumatism, and that as he might find it easier for tests to do them in a hospital I could take a room for after the big show, thus providing her with a chance to escape the worst of flood of calls of congratulations. That she should discuss with "eydt, since it was only an "idea". I would see Prutting, I think, and go over the matter with him if it tickles her. One can stress rheumatism rather than the hip, since it will not frighten her so much.

Will not press the Horace D.R. for the moment, but bring it up at the right time.

I was so pleased that you like Doris's new house and your room there. It will be a real pied-a-terre, I think, and a nice circling of the mystery as Hilda would say that you and Doris should be together, with all the other Dorises of England who find it a cosy bird-sanctuary for themselves, at the spot which gave you both a name and such a fine friendship. I suspect you will not want to move in and give up your Swiss residence (for business reasons), but in the end it will be Scilly Fido and Her Islands.

All love as always,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

7 March 1960

Dearest Fido,

Just back from my talk on Pound to the staff of the
Psychiatric Out-Patient Clinic at the New Haven Hospital. Actually
it turned out to be the opening session of a course called Psychiatry
322--Interdisciplinary Discussions. It seemed to interest them, altho
I did not leave too much time for questions, and I am always fearful
at trying to present so complicated a matter within so brief a span.

Then, immediately afterwards, a Turkish girl came for a
conference on the study of Faulkner she must write before going back to
Ankara. She has been working with me for just a year now, and has six
more months.

I ought to get at a mass of papers which need to be corrected,
but your letter of the 3rd was in and I cannot resist answering.

You are good to give me the other eskimo pieces for my
birthday. I flip my paws in best seal fashion, and bark across the ice
to you.

I am delighted that Alberto liked Brazil; it seems to me he
is much likelier to be happy there, to find a place, really to be valuable,
than in England. I can't somehow quite picture him returning to Portugal
itself, although one can tell that the Portuguese is in him. And nòcely
too.

You speak of Pantheon distribution. This has always been a
paradoxical situation with them. Maintaining a small sales force they
are slow on pushing and depend on reviews and orders being sent to them.
The results cut down the sales. Yet not having to meet the expenses of
large sales forces, as other publishers do, they can publish more marginal
books whether the book will go in big enough terms to justify the large
sales force, or whether to advertise it with the``
large printings demand.

I look forward to seeing the Wm Morris letters. It is hard for
me to comment on the Shorter letters at £200, without knowing the catalogue
and, as you say, nature of the contents. On the other hand 21 Yeats letters
would probably fetch $400 if you wanted me to shop them around for Doris,
and any group of that size has its interest. If there are enough left in
her collection to make a sort of niche for Clement Shorter, and you wanted
Doris to have the money, you might buy them in memory of the time when Clement
held your hand, looked deep in your eye, and whispered "Dolly." Joking
aside, if there are some Swinburne still, it might be nice to keep the
group together for Doris's sake. But I am never quite sure what is the
precise color of her memories.

As to the six weeks for Hilda in the States, you will see by
my yesterday's letter that I am suggesting to her that she have Prutting

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

13 March 1960

Dearest Fido,

One really can't sit down, conscience-free to do anything,
even to write you, as you know from the pressure of RUAN on yourself. At
any rate I ought to be, must indeed be at the preparation for my talk on
"The Situation of Modern Poetry" which I give tomorrow night in Keene
New Hampshire at the state college there. Why do I go? Because of my
cousin who is their business manager. Otherwise, why indeed!

Too much really intervenes. Yesterday I had a luncheon visit
from the assistant to the president of Rutgers University, an immense
university and series of branches in New Jersey, and he asked if I would
be interested in being considered for the post of provost of the university.
This is the job second only to the presidency, and the provost is in charge
of the faculty, educational policy, budgets etc. I suppose it would be double
my present salary, but I really can't get terribly interested in it, altho I
suppose I should be pleased to be thought able to do it. (I probably am not, or
at any rate would be bored by months of statistical columns. I don't find them
a poem as Harold D. does.) He wouldn't take no however, so I promised to
think it over for a few weeks. The present, new president was provost before.

Butor's lecture was interesting, one of those careful French affairs
which are so much like a vase on the mantel--perfectly proportioned and not really
to be handled. He spoke a careful and precise french, like a good schoolmaster,
and I was fine once I caught on to the fact that *une style romanesque* was not the
marvelously *dvocativève* (but hard to picture) term for some new way of writing
otherwise than in the gothic or international manner. My impressions now are
somewhat blurred with the much more interesting evening session for a few of the
French faculty and graduate students, given by Henri Peyre at the faculty club.
Thornton Wilder and his sister and I were the only guys there. Butor answered
questions about writing and his likes and dislikes. If I were to describe his
point of view by analogy, I should say that he naturally succeeded the existentialist
writers like Camus, and he and the others (Robbe Grillet etc) are really an
extension of the existentialist emotion, but have shifted from an emphasis on
the description and reliance on action for its own sake to a description and
reliance on objects for their own sake. This has a great deal to do with the
reform of language, and therefore is analagous to the imagist movement although
more naturalistic or homely in the objects and descriptive language chosen. The
drift is already, or shortly will be, away from mere description of single
objects or rooms or sequences towards more dynamics and towards plot in the older
sense. This seemed to me one reason why Butor expressed respect for Robbe Grillet's
powers as a poet but emphasized that he lacked power and drive. Just as no one
really could be an imagist only, save for an interminable sequence of lyric moments,
so no one is likely as novelist to remain forever within the present confines of
this newer phase; and indeed Butor has not. He constantly emphasized that they are
not a "group" in the sense of dadaism or sur-realisme, have never proferred as
manifesto a set of beliefs, but simply are in line with a feeling of the time. Now
all this, except where specifically stated to be, is not what Butor precisely said,
but my impression of the drift. I was interested, and I know you will be, at his
answer to a question whether he indeed--as you once thought--never blotted a line
or a word, or shifted a line or a word. He laughed with the sense that he was

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after all an artist, and did indeed change, though emphasizing that what they
were after was the impression of freshness and immediacy.

I was introduced to him at the afternoon lecture and had a pleasant talk with him early in the evening. He greatly admires Pound because of Pound's feeling for language and the immediacy of rendering--I did not bring that up originally--and when we were talking about novelists in general--Hemingway etc.-- and the reason for influences, I asked him if he knew Dorothy Richardson's work. He was much interested and I promised to send him a set. I h0pe Knopf still has it in stock. He took an awful beating on it, but is said never to remainder anything.

He is teaching at Bryn Mawr for four months and will be here into June. If you had decided to come over while Hilda was here I could have taken you down to Bryn Mawr to meet him, or perhaps persuaded him to come to New York. We seemed to get along very well together. He is petit bourgeois in origin, I should say, a little stocky and his clothes do not quite fit as they ought to. Someone remarked of him that he looked rather like a country priest, but his eyes are too lively for that--or perhaps I mean intellectually lively as well as personally. I was not quite clear, but gather he either did not take his agregassion (I don't know how to spell this, or quite what it) or did not go beyong it. At any rate he therefore cannot get a good teaching position at any French university, and so has taught at Manchester, in Greece, in Egypt etc. But he is beautifully read, and has strong feelings of what he likes. I think you would find him your pigeon.

It has been so long since you have mentioned precisely where you are on the *Memoirs* that I am not sure whether you decided to stop them at the moment of meeting Hilda and leaving your girlhood behind, or whether you were going on to the blitz and the moment of finding your identity after the searchings in Paris, Berlin and Switzerland; or whether you were making Paris the climax, as I gathered Collins wanted you to do for the sake of bringing in names.

The plan for a British Robbe Grillet or Butor is very exciting, for that is very much what *Beowulf* really was, quite apart from the theme.

You spoke of sending over the books of writers like Margiad Evans. I should say yes, for it was always my hope that we might bring together pretty complete collections of all these people with whom you have had what might be called a real correspondence. Thus, eventually with the letters themselves, there would be the one, or at least the basic memorial a writer wants. That somewhere publicly people can find what one has said. Such an opportunity continues to live; a tombstone Scrumbles even under perpetual care. So I think of Faith, and the others. Of course the Sitwells are a special case. They are their own monuments.

I'm much amused that you are hearing "I'm all right Jack." or rather
YOU'RE ALL RIGHT JACK, which seems to be a version of it. The "I" was original,
I am told, and is the tag line to rather an overwhelming curse. But language shifts.
Yes, the "war" is Korea, even here, or more so perhaps. I find it confusing.

I am not sure about the Eden book, which I can't read for the moment anyhow.
Why not wait, and if you ever decide you are through with it or find no eager reader
then send it along.

I was glad you saw George. Why not encourage him to come over this side
this summer, and have Prutting oversee an examination. I am frightened of the kind
of diet he can give himself, and the wrong sister would be visiting him.

3.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

I didn't mean to mislead you on the Viking Penguin, but you will not have been surprised at my ignorance of Kendrick. You are the one who is the authority on such matters, although Susan reads everything omnivorously and is ahead of me now.

I was delighted that Alberto had such a good time in Brazil, although my reading of his letter to you makes him seem less eager to move away from Europe than was your impression. But of course you did have the talk with him. He seems like an exceptionally attractive young man, sensitive and docile, not really likely to end up with much accomplished, but very much the sort of man who makes life bearable for others.

Doris does seem happy in her new home, and I really do congratulate you for having made it possible. I mean, finally getting rid of John and the old house; and yet not moving too soon or until the right place came along, and the old one was gotten rid of. And it will give you too the spot on the Scillies which you ought to have as at least a *doigt à terre*.

Tell Doris if she does come out that we should love to see her for a day in New Haven again. Or let me know when she decides, and I will write her myself.

Cole and Gerald. Yes, you are right: old and bitter, as some people turn to be. But you have done what you can, and will continue to do so. Your letters and your occasional visit sustain them.

Let me know if you need new paperbacks, or want me to send to England. But I am always afraid of guessing tastes and risking customs.

And now for my Keene picture!

All love

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

20 March 1960

Dearest Fido,

Sometimes I think I shall never quite survive this time of
year. The past week has been impossibly full, quite apart from the fact
that Susan and I have had little Justus with us for the last ten days. He
is a delightful little boy, but I am exhausted even from the small part
of the day I am with him. This week will be equally bad, although Justus
goes back to his mama on Tuesday. Tomorrow I have to lunch with a general
who seems to have startled the local military by saying I was the one he
wanted to see. (We were students together at Magdalen, but I am leaving the
local colonels with the impression that a summit conference is to be held.)
Then I have to slip into a dinner jacket in mid-afternoon (always a silly
feeling, as tho I were a polish immigrant getting married) to go to New York
for a meeting of the trustees of the Library Associates at dinner, and take
a late train back. Fortunately this is my last meeting on that. Tuesday
an englishman, professor of american history at Manchester, comes for overnight
and an evening lecture. We have to give a cocktail party, small dinner
and party afterwards. Then Wednesday I go to New York in late morning for the
National Book Award ceremony; and as I am on the executive committee I am
asked to cast my rays of sunshine even at the press conference. But on Thursday
the spring holidays begin and last until April 6th. I am so many manuscripts behind
that I shall be grateful for the chance to do one a day. But with luck this
should leave me free for yours when it is finished.

Various packages have come in from you. The three ivory eskimo
pieces have arrived safely, and unquestioned by customs. They are charming
and extremely interesting. I am anxious to make my trip to Philadelphia and
see what the museum there does in the way of identification. And I do thank
you for these birthday presents. The only possible better one would be your
own flipping over some time. But you are already among my chiefest treasures,
my moon of moons.

The two Nadajine pocket diaries and notebooks arrived and will be
added to the muniments. Also the William Morris letters. They are, as you say,
not very lively or important, but they do sentimentally) move one. I handle
mss a lot, but somehow it startled me to read these with his signature. I think
it must have been because they were mixed in with letters from Plank, Alan,
Rosemary and even myself. Did I mention the Amy Lowell letters which came earlier?
Probably not, for anything can happen at the moment. They are most interesting,
and I should think important. I really must sometime get copies of your letters
to her, which are on file at the harvard Library. And fill out the missing page
on one of these. Anyhow the muniments flourish.

I have also been naughty, and purhased one or two (maybe three or
four) items for the boy's book collection, including one rather expensive three-
volume Henty. But with henty, ballentine, and Fenn I think one must make the
effort to become as nearly complete as possible. As one gets the commoner ones
already on hand, the others of course come dearer. But are what bring distinction.
And I have bought two icicles for the northern collection, tho these were not
dear. One is a allantyne item: *Northern Coasts of America and the Hudson's Bay
Territories* (by Patrick Tutler, with continuation by Ballantyne) (1854). And the
other a wild item *THE VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES OF CRUSOE RICHARD DAVIS*, London
1803, in which he goes to Greenland and caught a "wild feathered woman with

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NEW HAVEN • CONN

whom he lived, and taught the English language."¹¹ Now don't tell me that this doesn't intrigue you. Her name was Mary.

I tried to phone the Boys on the morning they left, but waited politely until nine when I thought they might have risen from their bed, only to discover they had already checked out and were presumably on the high seas. I had had a copy of Hilda's book sent to them by special messenger the day before so presume that Kenneth had this for their entertainment aboard. As I told you, I thought they both looked well. The rest of the list for *Madrigal* is being taken care of.

Of course I will read *Ruan* or anything else you want. Perhaps if you finished with a copy to me in time we could go over it if you should decide to flip across during Hilda's visit. Or we can meet at Narsak.

I really am sorry about Helen W., for there isn't a thing one can do about it. I don't think you can, or should try.

Good idea to let slay have his now. And he will, presumably, be a Kenneth heir eventually.

I spoke to my Turkish girl about the Goughs. She is delighted to have the chance to meet them, and she is so especially attractive I know they will like her, in turn.

I think I spoke of the Eden memoirs. Let the rest see them; then if nowhere else to send them, they will be useful as later reference.

Have no idea what to think about the Heydt punishment, except that he has managed to hurt her pride, I think, and is indeed a little clumsy vis-a-vis Dori. But perhaps we overemphasize his necessity so long as he puts her on the plane. What I really wish she would bring over is a little bonne. Perhaps Mr A could urge this on her, for I doubt that he will want to do it.

You speak of John S's bourgeois traits, and indeed they are just that. His strain is towards established respectability, and I think even his extra curriculum are his misinterpretation (for himself) of respectability. I agree it can be boring.

I shall see about the pines. For the Hotsons. Do you want me to call the virginal man and see what one would cost? I think the pines take precedence however, though it makes me feel bourgeois to say so. I shall go ahead and see that the pines are set in.

I am really intrigued about Ena's leaflet on the Greenland flights. If she can get another for me, I wish she would. I had, somehow the feeling that we were doing it just in the nick of time. Igaliko would be fun. My own feeling is that if things get straightened out this end this summer we might fly out if one could get a glimpse of the east coast, or north above Julianehaab. This would let us feel the sense of the icecap, and any possible difference. Then perhaps one should concentrate on the Mackenzie.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 March 1960

Dearest Fido,

Really, I give up! Each time as I get ready to write you at length, something comes up to interrupt. Yesterday and today it has been the income tax report, and the accountant come to see me about it. Well, he has what there is now; with all the deductions for Lizzie's medical expenses, and my own, I daresay there will not be too much to pay.

Let me work from the present back, and hope to catch up eventually. Your letter of the 26th was here in record time, and I do, I do, I do pat my Fido on the rump, scratch behind the ears, rub noses, and sniff in ecstasy. For you have certainly done a noble job both in regard to the interview and the plane reservations. I did write her the interview didn't matter, although I was disappointed of course--for *au fond* I think she has really gotten to like a certain limelight. However I have told Grove--and I think rightly--that t.v. and radio are not for her; certainly not the former. We will take care of the reservations at the Stanhope. A small suite for her, and a room for the nurse. For the full period, although one can cancel if necessary. I do think the bedroom and sitting room are necessary for her, although they wouldn't of course be for you. If you do decide to flip over I can get you a room at the Stanhope I feel sure, although I rather thought it might be more peaceful for you if you went to the Beekman. One could sneak to Pup's without having to report every move. It would be nice having you here while she is over, but my heart would beat highest if you were with us on your own. I think you must plan for the autumn anyhow. I will also alert Prutting, and probably run in to see him before Hilda comes.

Will write to Whyte and invite him up for the day when he comes to the States. I wish England would do *Freud*; if only life made it possible for me to run back and forth between London and here. Apparently one has to keep one's fences mended. Neither Grove nor Pantheon seem to take very much interest in placing books there.

Did I write you that Kurt is to be given the Medal of Honor of the German Book Trade, given each year to a distinguished foreign publisher, on May 15th? This will please him, and should!

I am constantly intrigued by your descriptions of Mr A, with his small boy head and his michelin torso. I think I get him, but am not always sure that I admire what I get. However he is better than I thought, and he is kind to our Hilda. This means a lot to both of us.

Descriptions of Kusnacht continue also to alarm me. This will be an important trip of hers I feel sure. Perhaps afterwards we will need to put our heads together. We need to put them into a double sleeping bag.

Do send the Butor essays if and when, although it will be some time before I can get to them.

The Quartermass Experiment has come. I forget the pitch on it.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

Glad you liked *Madrigal*. It is a quite extraordinary piece of evocation. One wonders at how she can do it after these years. It is really only because she is dissassociated now that she can do this; like the Pound piece it is an exercise in exorcism. I do not think it will be everybody's cup of tea, any more than the *Freud* was. But it will grip many, unforgetably.

I must reread *Murex*. At the moment I think, however, it is more important to get the other novels and the long Helen poem out first.

It is hard to say about George, except that with diverticulosis he must be very very careful with his diet. I wonder if his sister would come over again, or whether he would be willing to visit her for a summer. He does seem so well settled in England that I loathe thinking of him not being there, would prefer to sacrifice a few years in order to let him finish up there.

Yes the Moody Hughes collection of letters is here; also those of Margiad Evans. So one should be complete on the books. Perhaps Margiad's husband could help fill out if there were small or private printings of things.

The picture of James Macpherson delighted me. But I seem to forget who he is.

I am not quite clear on Doris. Although she has a farmer for the daffodils, I take it she still shows and sells as from her new home? No reason why she shouldn't of course, so long as her neck is above the trumpets.

We are both (Susan and I) just beginning to emerge. It was indeed rather strenuous having the little boy with us for a fortnight, and when we returned him to his mother last Tuesday we were immediately visited by the Professor of American Institutions at Manchester, in England. He gave a lecture that night after dinner; we had a cocktail party for some thirty-odd, and then a dinner party for eight, and there was a small reception for him after the lecture. He was trained at Yale, although a Britisher, so one was rather forced to lay out the red carpet. They left the next morning at seven; I took the noon train for New York and the National Book Award ceremonies at the Astor. It was all a little silly, for 'alcolm Cowley and I were supposed to be at the press conference before the award, to ask questions if the book reviewers couldn't think of any. At times they couldn't, so we did. Anyhow I knew Robert Lowell, and Ellman (of the Joyce) had worked under me during the war, and been a student at Yale; and I read the Philip Roth book on the way down to New York, having been told ahead of time. The latter's was called *Goodbye, Columbus*. I thought it was a historical novel about Queen Isabella, but the Columbus turned out to be the city in Ohio. So may be it could be called a mystery. All this went on through a second press conference in which future authors were exhibited one by one, as though we had the privilege of examining a foetus. I suppose one might have called it a womb with a view. Anyhow I think some fifty or sixty authors stood up as introduced by their press agents, and one could only think how many books really do get published in a year. Later we had the ceremonies, which went off more promptly than usual, and thereafter two hours of cocktails

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • CONN

for those who wanted them. I moved about the room regally, greeting this person and that, saying to a reviewer from Dubuque or Memphis that I hoped she or he would like a novel about to be published by my dear friend H.D. It really helps, alas. I did have a long talk with Kay Boyle, whom I had not met before, although we had many friends in common including McAlmon. Apparently a volume of his short stories are about to be reissued. I saw John Schaffner and his Hubert Creekmore, and John seemed well recovered from his confinement and said the boyiii was thriving.

By Thursday Susan was in a state of collapse, though she hadn't gone to New York, so that afternoon I took her to the doctors for a series of tests, and the next morning she went for x-rays as well. The reports came in yesterday, and as suspected her thyroid condition is way down, so she must start treatment for that. However, she is relieved to know what the trouble is, and so am I. As for myself, my tooth began to ache on Tuesday and on Wednesday was worse, so on Thursday I went to the dentist to discover that I had a badly abscessed molar, and have been going to the dentist daily ever since in an effort to save it and my jaw. Not that the latter need to be taken too literally, but the infection had spread to the jawbone and since nerves were being pressured, the feeling was less than benign. It is reasonably under control now. Fortunately it is spring holidays so I do not lose time from classes.

Friday night I had dinner with Dudley Fitts who had come to town, and afterwards Susan and I had to go--as long promised--to see Edmund Wilson who had asked to meet me, or see me, about an edition of Phelps Putnam. I had not known him before, although he once reviewed a book of mine as I did not remind him, although the review was favorable. He was a little preposterous about the Putnam book, making explanations about John Farrar being a publisher, etc, and being his oracular self. However after the other guests had left I got him going on Iriquois Indians, having mentioned that my favorites were eskimaux (they were interesting he agreed) and we got along famously, singing a sweet duet together, with much gaity and even wit. To my surprise I like him.

Next Saturday I am summoned to meet Herbert Reed, who is to be here in town with his sister-in-law. I was amused he should have asked for me to be invited. Probably knew no one else in town.

I see I have no time to write in detail about Lady Vyvyyan's book. She does write exceptionally well, and fascinatingly, when she gets going. The trip down the Rat (or was it up) is first-class, so is the period at Aklavik. I think the opening is a little slow. And the last section as of the trip down from Alaska, and in Vancouver loses the pace. Let me write again about whether she should try to rework this before I send the ms around, or send as is. It is a pity I am not in London, both for seeing her and because the market will be better there. But it is not impossible here.

All love. I have to drive to Boston tomorrow for a funeral. I did not know I knew the man so well; but he died suddenly on a trip in Hartford, and his widow wrote two hours afterwards to say when the funeral would be; so did his managing editor from Boston. So of course I have to go.

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

4 April 1960

Dearest Fido,

Do not quite dare risk this to Kusnacht, although I should have wanted you to have a letter sooner than this will reach you. But what a period of time! The present confusion comes from our entertainment of the Danish women's badminton team, here to play India in the semi-finals of the international cup. The winner plays another semi-finals group in Baltimore, and then the challenge comes in Philadelphia in a week or so. Denmark was the challenger before. I had not known badminton was the third most popular sport in Denmark, just behind football and gymnastics.

My tooth seems to be coming along reasonably well, although still treated daily; and Susan's hypo-thyroid condition is responding to the treatment.

Alas, I have to go to Louisville, Kentucky, by air on Friday to make a speech that night, and then fly back the next day to correct examinations. Oh weh!

Am interested in your reaction to the Bergner. We saw the play here, with Katherine Cornell. The best was in the snippets from the plays themselves. Otherwise it was not much, and I am not surprised you were bored. Besides I should not have thought Bergner was the Shaw cup of tea. But all this gives me an idea. Why don't you and I give readings from the Sitwell--Tchellichef (sp is wrong) correspondence. You play Edith and I will play Pavel. It will be an absolute sensation, and after we finish playing Rumania, we can take it to Greenland for the eskimaux. I am serious about this.

Anyhow it relieves me that your heart did not pitter-pat for the Bergner. I think she would be a little indigestible now.

Shift in plans for Hilda's arrival duly noted.

The Kusnacht situation seems really to be slipping. I watch each report from you.

I told you, I think, that the Eskimo figures had arrived and are simply splendid. I think it must be only ivory from now on. The sappstone has been too commercialized, unless you and I happen to get up the east side of Hudson Bay some time and chance on an unusual piece in igloo, as an archaeologist would say.

Am most curious to get your opinion of Mr A after this last visit, as I was to hear you say you thought he had frightened Mrs A. My own hunch that he was he who spread the rumor, via New York and Covici, behind that extraordinary letter that Marya wrote. No one else could have dared, and actually what he probably did was to kid about it only to be taken seriously. I say this because, again perhaps, a similar semi-jocular manner might have shown itself to Hilda, and -- as any analyst will tell you--behind what is semi-jocular is often the truth which is being a little concealed. For example, you say he would be completely happy if a millionaire. That being the case, half a million is better than no million at all, and he what this could mean for himself and Uatha. Incidentally, you might tell him sometime, since he worries so much about Hilda's use of "madrigal" that the OED gives as first definition: "a short lyrical poem of amatory character". The word was often used this way in the 17th century, and only by association has become fixed with a particular type of setting for this sort of poem. I agree that many people will think of it as the multi-choralled swan, but Hilda will have no problem in explaining why the poem and the novel are lyrical and of an amatory character.

Yes, I'd be interested in the Butor book of essays. Actually he seems quite impossible to get in New Haven at least. I had a letter from Knopf, and Pilgrimage is still in print, so they sent a copy to Butor and billed me as requested. I daresay I will get no word from Butor, but he will hardly have time to read it now.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

Congratulations on your triumph vis-a-vis *Newsweek*, the companion for
New York etc.

You ask about Pup's books, but I think they are likely to be too common
on this side to warrant shipping over. Now that they have the summer house you
might bring up the subject, or I can when I see her. Otherwise would Dean's boys
be interested, or for the public library on the Scillies. That is, if such a thing
exists.

In one of last two yellowbacks from you was a letter from Doris speaking
of Hardy letters to Shorter, and saying Maggs would return them which would give
you time to hear from me. Was there a confusion on your part, when you wrote me
of the letters to Shorter from Yeats. Actually Hardy seems more likely a correspondent.
Now if Doris only had the letters from Clement to the man of the book forgeries, or
rather vice versa, she could sell those for a fortune. The big question still is
in many minds, how much of a part did he play in this epic swindle.

I hope we can persuade Hilda to go to Bryn Mawr for the citation. I feel
like a miracle man in the mending of those fences over the years.

Must close at get to my preparation of the speech for Louisville. And
classes start Wednesday. I spent the weekend reading long-winded dissertation
manuscripts on Mark Twain and History, and Melville and the Near East. Pray for
me now and in the hour of my need.

All love

NORMAN

What shall I say to my brother about Paris

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

6 April 1960

Dearest Fido,

It seemed like such a sensible date to choose the 8th for my lecture in Louisville, and now the seniors are having their comprehensives, we have just had the Danish badminton players for four days, Wesleyan wants the manuscript for the next book of poetry to publish, Pantheon has just written (more or less in the same mail with the arrival of your ms) to say they hope for Ruan in the fall; a letter from the American Academy says they must have Hilda ms by next mid-week for the show to go with the award; I have the books to read for the Mark Twain review; and I still have not written my talk for Friday night, have a seminar tomorrow afternoon, with dentist appointment in the morning followed by appointments with students; and have to drive to Le Guardia at daybreak Friday to morning to catch a nine thirty plane for Louisville. Anyhow I am taking the plane back to New Haven the next morning, or rather noon, which will let me spend Sunday at the office.

Monday the 11th is clear; Tuesday the 12th I have to go to New York for the Book Awards Committee, to review the ceremony this year. Wednesday the 13th I have an Alumni Seminar Committee Meeting at lunch, a board meeting (after my 2-4 seminar) of the International Student Center; and then have to go directly to a class dinner being given in New Haven instead of New York (alas, for I could skip it if it were in New York). Not much of a birthday, but I shall be at home for breakfast. Thursday I have nothing after my seminar, except a lecture on Cummings in the evening at the Medical School.

Good Friday, Saturday, and Easter Sunday are free, if you want to come over. And so is Monday. Tuesday evening I have an engagement (the 19th); Wednesday the 20th I talk at the Kiwanis Club at noon on Greenland; Hilda's friend Robert Duncan the poet arrives to stay with us and give a public reading of his poetry that night (I suppose I shall have to give a dinner or cocktail party for him); Thursday April 21st I have to speak at night on the Arctic to the North Guilford Archery Club (at the request of the FBI) (that is, the local agent, who is a member). Then I skip to April 27th when I have to entertain someone named Moss Hart, who is a playwright I believe. Saturday the 30th we are tied down. Friday and Saturday, May 5th-6th I have to be in Philadelphia for an executive meeting of the American Studies Association.

I rush this schedule, since tomorrow will be busy, and I must try to write my talk, or begin it, tonight. You can plan your flip over from it, if you decide that you can come. I am not quite sure what Hilda feels about your being here for the ceremony itself. She has asked to reserve a ticket for you, but this need not obligate you.

Am too fatigued at the moment to try to answer the rest of the letter but will hope to be able to tomorrow.

All love as always,

Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

10 April 1960

Dearest Fido,

I take a breather from the midst of the comprehensive exams (they are like the Oxford Schools, only coming earlier), for at least a note to you. The flight down and back from Kentucky were a change, but I accomplished less on the trip than I thought. One took rather a milk plane, in order to go from and arrive back at Idlewild and my car, so that we flew low for the many stops, and it was bumpy. However I managed to finish a book for reviewing on the way down, and after lunch with my hosts (the president and v.p. of the Kentucky Alumni Society) I simply took a nap before showring and dressing for the "do." Everyone was most pleasant, the talk seemed to be acceptable, I spent Saturday morning with friends, took the plane back to New York, slept most of the way, and now am ready for the exams and manuscripts and appointments and committee meetings. Fortunately I have only one actual lecture to give this week outside of regular teaching.

Susan did yeowoman work in New York on Friday, and has engaged or reserved a two-room suite for Hilda at the Stanhope, with a somewhat distant room for Sister Regina. I thought a two bedroom suite might put the sister rather too much on Hilda. This way it will be rather like the Verena, only better. I will have a t.v. put in, if there is not one already; I will see there is a typewriter etc. I have taken a room for Susan and myself for the night before the ceremony and just after, to ward off unwelcome visitors if there should be any, etc. I thought also I might once or twice take a room and give a little party as for Hilda, so she could feel to slip off to her own place when she wanted to.

The Easter and birthday ties were waiting for me when I returned, and how lovely they are. This is a rather new GRieder manner, and I shall relish them. What a Grieder man you have made of me. But what a man you have made of me in so many ways! I shall be happy all over again on Wednesday with my little ivory figures.

I forgot to list for the last time the various books that had been coming in, and enclose a slip to show what has arrived. Alas, I just put a group of four or five on the shelf without listing them. But my secretary already had made out cards. It was the bundle with the Empson "Complex Words" in it--not my taste, but very useful to have--and the David Horner, which I shall want to look into sometime, for the horror of it.

Am in the midst of a little holiday from my daily visits to the dentist. I have a week off while we see if it aches, and if it will be possible to save the tooth. I have just had my first of the month bill from the dentist--rather formidable--but how ghastly it reads when he lists as a cost: "extirpation of pulp." It makes one feel like a manure pile, or a rotten orange.

Kenneth wrote me from the boat, savagely about Madrigal. I had not mentioned to you, because it puzzled me so. But he is, you know, rather conventional in his tastes, which are exquisite in the truest sense. I think great vigor, either yours or Hilda's, rather frightens him. D'slay is very gentle with him, and a little cuddly. My only "in" is suavity, but since I like him we manage on that.

What is going on about the bestman for the wedding. I mean the Princess Margret's of course.

I will write Whyte, and you can see in June. But not a collected poems for Hilda under any circumstance, for the moment at least. We have too much to get out.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

And it is most important to keep her from flooding the market. Horace has always insisted on this as the best ploy, and he is quite right. She is the artist who only with the greatest persuasion can be made to put thin pen to paper, and it takes even more persuasion to let her allow the public to share.

Glad you have the outline of the Memoirs as you want them. Your plan to close with Berlin and *Close Up* sounds all right, for the calendar is always a safe kind of structure to use, and you can always stop on Tuesday or Saturday as the fancy tempts. When one has a thematic structure the problem, alas, is different. Then one has to work towards a point of understanding, or a climax of some sort, as in a novel or a painting.

Feel pretty sure now of what I want to say about Lady Vyvyyan's manuscript, but had better look it over once more before sending you a detailed report. It is too important to her for me to trifle with.

13 April 1960

Dearest Fido,

I have your birthday tie on, your birthday cable arrived
to delight me just as I was leaving for my seminar, your various greetings
by mail are all in hand and heart, and at home my little eskimo ivories
will be waiting to rub noses when I go home tonight.

That may be rather late, for I have to go to a reunion class
dinner scheduled in New Haven tonight, and then come back to the office
to read more examinations. I had my candle burning in my poached egg
this morning.

I adore Jean Starr's poem, with "Ah, Jonah, but the age is queer." How does it go?

How gay the age is, and how queer!
And how delightful, now that Greenland's near.

Really, I think we should not be burdened with blue jeans. They are too
revealing with certain overplump figures of speech.

Thank you for the trouble about the Paris hotel. I have
inquired locally from the French, and they recommend the Lutetia on the
Boulevard Raspail. I remember it from the 20's when I stopped there
once, and from the war when it was the HQ of the Gestapo. The Germans
usually chose comfortable hotels, and convenient ones.

La belle Blanche sounds fine to me, but so would anyone whom
Hilda and you liked and trusted.

Delighted about Rosemary's prize.

Blessings on you.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

23 April 1960

Dearest Fido,

How you endure me I don't know, though I am always grateful
for your patience. But I warned you of last week, when I gave you my
schedule some time ago. I did not underestimate it. If only you were
here however I could laugh about it, now that it is over. There were moments
between-times when I had forgotten a person could be so tired. However
this week coming up is not so bad, in the sense that I have no outside
addresses to make until a week from Monday when I go to Hartford to talk
to the assembled teachers of English in the secondary schools to advise
them on how they can celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mark Wain's death.

I shall not try to acknowledge the various yellow envelopes.
They were read and are now being filed away. However, Aiken's *Landscape
West of Eden*, Jocelyn Brooke's *Private View*, Margiad Evans' *Autobiography*,
Gillingham's *Umiak*, Branner's *No Man Knows the Night*, and Buechner's *A
Long Day's Dying* can be cited separately and gratefully in each case. Thank
you.

I enclose Butor's letter, which I thought might interest you. I
wrote him that if there were actually any interest in having her published in
French and he recommended a translator one might be able to give a few francs
for bread.

What screams about the aluminum eagle as well as presumably by
it, in the Grosvenor Square aerie. But the truth is, I must say I think an
emblem of this size is pretty stupid on the part of the Americans!

Many thanks for the Easter cable. I have told Rosset, of Grove,
who has written that they have told their London agent about Chapman & Hall.
As with Pantheon's contract, they have the right to negotiate the British
publication. I must say they did little about the *Selected Poems* however. I
will let them know also about Dutton's interest. I suppose much will depend
upon its reception here. One hardly knows whether to welcome or dread the end
of the week. People will be for it or against it, no midway I should think.

I really am sorry about Anticoli. But if it is truly uninhabitable how
can the boys lease it. Actually I agree with you; Kenneth needs something new
to expend his creative energy on. I almost think I have him ready to do his
memoirs. Shall I try? I think his kind of wit would go very well in a certain
genre of this sort of thing. He would probably be over here enough for me to
go over it with him--as he seemed to want--otherwise it would be too expensive to
flip Rome-ward.

Yes, the Beowulf was that special edition. Actually Sylvia sent me
one a couple 66 years ago, but it is good to have both. Later I can present to
the British Museum to go under the stained glass kennel I shall give in your
memory.

Everything seems to be in order at the Stanhope. Shall I tell them

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

to send me all bills, or suggest to Hilda that she please her brother by
putting some of the cake he has baked for her? If I pay there is plenty
in the account now, and why not make up anything later on, if necessary,
when we see where we are. I shall give you accounts as elaborate as Rene
used to, but at no charge.

As to your coming over, the answer is that you do not need to
come in the slightest, even if Hilda suggests it at times. (I give you the
six weeks holiday as an advance birthday present). For once in your life
you are free to make up your own mind in terms of what you want yourself to
do. If you are coming for my sake, then come later, perhaps in October,
when I can really rub noses with you. Everything now will be fleeting; and
don't forget that I have school keeping until June 19th, and afterwards only
two weeks to get reports in before Mrs Wohlenb erg leaves and a new secretary
begins. So my trips to Hilda will be running down and running back, while I
keep both pots burning. I have a few speaking engagements during that period
and some reviews to write, but think I can swing it all right.

You ask about Maggs query about volumes of the Boys Own Annual. This
fits into collection all right, but since we already have some volumes they
must tell me which ones.

I thought d'acosta was a Greenhandicame you once said you had met.
She was Garbo's opposite number for a while I believe.

Had lunch on Wednesday at the local Kiwanis Club, where I spoke on
Greenland, and the man who introduced me said that he had just come back from
London where he had lunched several times with Eric White who was to visit him
this October in New Haven. Octo 10th weekend, I believe. So that is taken care
of. White had asked if he could see me.

You will perhaps think I am mad and spendthrift with the account. But
on Wednesday night we overnighted Hilda's admirer, Robert Duncan, the poet who
reviews her work in Poetry, a San Francisco poet but not really a beatnik.
Heydt went to visit him. He proved very housebroken, and had the right likings
in books for my taste. Hilda, Dorothy Richardson, Stein, and Mary Butts. Also
understands a good deal about Pound. His background is semi occult thru his
parents, so he digs Hilda's references and structures and resolutions. he talks
better about her than anyone I have ever heard. Was here reading his poems, and
Grove is to bring out his next volume in the fall. So, next year being Hilda's
75th birthday, I said how nice it would be if there were a critical study of
her published then, and wouldn't he like to do it. His only income--he is 40--
comes from $75 a month from his adopted mother (since 2) which pays for rent
for himself and his boy friend, some 30 miles north of S.F. I said I would
give him a thousand to keep him going while he finished it. I liked him, and
the others here did too. He is well known enough, has the sympathy, and would
be a good tickler for the younger generation. And she needs the dignity of a
book about her. I think we can get Grove or someone to publish it. Hilda of
course mustn't know about the thousand, for the moment anyhow, although she
likes him I think. I would have conferred with you, but since the moment seemed
the best one in which to go ahead, I did. And since he has an independence I
think you'd like, he is well enough worth helping in himself.

All love you, Mom

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

26 April 1960

Dearest Fido:

I roared when I read of your Faulkner dilemma with
La Schnack. You may recall that some years ago I went thru a
similar anguish with her in regard to an earlier translation from
him. My little Turkish student who is writing in Turkish on Faulkner
came in shortly after your letter yesterday, and I read her the
problems. She groaned from compassion.

I hasten in any event to help as I can. As on page 207
the "vows" refers to whatever marriage it is that is being talked about
in these pages. (I haven't read the book yet). " Came up to see me
graduate in Ack" presumably means, to see me take my degree in the academic
rather than the scientific side (that is, the humanities rather than the
sciences.) This is amusing: Faulkner never went to a northern college, but
hung around Yale for a while with his good friend from Oxford, Mississippi
who was an undergraduate here(Phil Stone), and then went to Harvard Law
School where Faulkner still hung around. To graduate in "Ac" (as it
properly is) is almost uniquely a Yale term, where one was in "Ac" or in
"Sheff" (Sheffield Scie tific School). It has no business to be used for
Harvard where it is meaningless.

Nice for the eskimos that they can have their own bishop. One
thinks of the 9,500 Anglicans rubbing noses and singing hallelujahs.

Why don't we both go to the zoo and pull something!

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

28 April 1960

Dearest Fido,

I do hope to God you are at Kenwin when this comes, or
at least soon after. Knowing what jackets can mean in the way of
trauma or joy, I am unwilling to pass final judgment on the enclosed
sketh for Ruan without letting you see it. It came in this noon's
mail to me from the New York Pantheon office.

"I do hope," to quote from them this time, "you are as
pleased with the sketch as we are here. One question for you: what
is your feeling as to the number of men in the ship? From the standpoint
of design, as well as the specific event depicted in the drawing, I would
say that the number indicated is quite right. But I ask this now
simply because Bryher does not make note of the number of men accompanying Honorius."

The question is yours, really. As well as to whether there
are any inadequacies or errors in the depiction of the boat. I feel
reasonably confident if one were illustrating a kayak. But this is your
sea.

Despite the cost I think you had better cable me

Norman Pearson

Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

and indicate as to the number of men, other objections, or simply an okay
as it stands. I had the positive photostat made this afternoon so I could
rush to you. No reason for sending it back, as I have the negative and, at
the moment, the original also. I will send him off until your cable comes.

Still busy as a little beaver. Monday night I wrote fifty appeals
for funds for the International Student Center; Tuesday night Susan and I were
invited out to dine with the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, a rather insignificant
bearded stammerer who paints at Leeds and teaches students there how to see and
do with art. Not impressive, and still very much like a little boy being led
in at teatime to meet Mummy's and Daddy's famous friends. Yesterday was chiefly
devoted to an American playwright named Moss Hart, and his wife who is an
actress named Kitty Carlyle. Hart's mummy and daddy were unknown Jewish folk
from New York, and he himself never went beyond the third grade. We were led
by the hand to meet him, and he was worth it. Very intelligent and witty and
well read. I lunched him, they both came to my seminar, and he admired the
Henty Collection, although he said he had read absently Ralph Henry Barbour.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

2 May 1960

Dearest Fido,

Your letter of the 28th in, and I rush an answer in order to
send out airmail tonight.

Address:

The Stanhope
5th Avenue at 81st Street,NYC 28
(New York phone: Butterfield 8-5800,
cable HOPESTAND, teletype NY 1-3091, RCA tex NY 4244.)

We can certainly hire her a Smith Corona. Would she like an
office type or a portable. And would she feel it fun to take a whirl at an
electric. You had better write me the answers to this, or I can attend to
immediately after her arrival.

Schaffiner or I will take care of tips on arrival. Otherwise,
except for quarter or half dollar tips when she asks something to be brought
up, she will do it chiefly on a weekly basis. It will be worth doing well,
say ten dollars a week to chambermaid, and five a week to the waiter who brings
her breakfast. Sal rate for food is fifteen percent now. I will draw up a
full list to give her on arrival.

Have her put on the Customs sheet that she is a citizen of the
USA, resident in Kusnacht, and if she wants an American address have her
give Perdita's or mine.

All love. How good it will be to see her!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

8 May 1960

Dearest Fido,

I had an excellent morning on Friday with Mr Holsaert and Mr Gross of Pantheon about Ruan. I really couldn't write anything much in detail to you beforehand, and hardly can now, except of course that I do think this is the book you wanted it to be, and nothing could make me happier. It has these wonderful scenes and the sense of the distant islands always there, figured one way or another, formed and reformed in Ruan's dreams.

I had not meant to be pedantic about the dust jacket, except that remembering some of the wrappers that Collins has designed, I did not want this book spoiled by too much of this or too little of that. It seemed such an easy way to refer to you as the expert, and such an easy way to keep from spending hours myself in checking what you would know in a minute. Thank you for having Helen cable to Gross. The cable came just before I reached the office. So I have sent the design back to the illustrator to have him put in final shape.

We also went over, that is Gross and I did, the jacket material of which Helen had written a sketch. I have touched it up slightly, as I wrote you in the accompanying letter, but only to emphasize a point or two I wanted to make as to the difference between the theme of this novel and the earlier ones. Not altogether different of course, but certainly not the same pattern. My version will be typed in the morning and sent to Gross. I will send copies to you and to Helen (to whom I shall also send a copy of this in case you want to discuss anything by phone).

Gross asked me about a matter which he had forgotten to mention in my letters from him, and which you must once have told me--but do not know recall. That is the matter of the map. So I tried to design one for him there which would fit my idea of suitability. I do not think of a map nicely detailed and filled in with margins, but one like those Ruan's own time might have had (not really of course: that is, a rough outline of Cornwall trailing off, then the Scillies in their spot; then the coastline of Ireland near the winter camp, but trailing off at each end; the Welch coast similarly treated, and then the sense of openness to the north into which the Walrus sails. This gives the feeling of each of the elements as an island. I hope you approve. And if you do, I must know (even by wire) where in Ireland you envisage the camp to have been (Waterford?) and where in Wales they went before they finally sailed. Just the two names will be enough so that I can indicate the headlands etc that are to be included.

Holsaert and I then spent several hours while I went over with him the few changes I had suggested, and looked at samples of what he had done as copy editor. You know he has done copy editing for Duggan and Miss Renault, and is a very nice person indeed, whose sensibility is best judged by the fact that he admires The Players Boy most among all your writings. Poor boy, you have absolutely terrified him, through Helen, and Gross of course is terrified as well. Terrified mostly because they are so confused, and because Holsaert never ran into the same problems with Duggan or Renault in working with their English texts.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN · CONN

I regularized the inclusion of place of publication, and publisher, some of both of which you had not included, if I remember correctly; I corrected the titles of the books, as with *Poetry and Letters* rather than *Life and Letters*; put Lethbridge's usually used middle initial instead of the one typed in; etc. Where there was an American edition, in the case of Williams before the English publication, I put it as more available to the American audience of the book. This was a little presumptuous, I am sure.

The only thing at the moment is for you to let me know about the spot in Ireland and the spot in Wales where they landed, or any other ideas you had for the map. Did you ever send me material for this? Helen said you had, to New York.

Then perhaps if you have ideas as to whether to send the suggested changes to Helen, or to fly Holsaert over, you can tell them as you feel them. I am simply anxious to have you as happy about the book as I am, and if possible to have the publishers happy too. They are really being awfully good, and not at all commercial about it.

All love and admiration,

MCCLELLAND AND STEWART LIMITED

25 Hollinger Road Toronto 16 Ontario Canada Cables: Emandess

December 8, 1959.

Mr. Kyrill Schabert,
President,
Pantheon Books Inc.,
333 Sixth Avenue,
NEW YORK, 14, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Schabert:

When I was in New York in September, I mentioned to you
the possibility of our preparing a text edition for Grades
IX and X English Literature courses in this province of
THE FOURTEENTH OF OCTOBER by Bryher. At that time, we were
only beginning to consider the idea and our plans were
rather nebulous.

Since then we have had Mr. Vance indicate the editing which
he considers useful for a text edition. We are sending a
copy of THE FOURTEENTH OF OCTOBER as marked by Mr. Vance.
He has indicated some deletions and consequently some new
paragraphing.

We are sending one marked copy and retaining a copy here.
We have not yet read the book as edited, and we wish to
retain a copy for reading. When you have had an oppor-
tunity to examine the marked copy, I think we shall be
in a better position to discuss whether a text edition
is feasible and also to make suitable arrangements.

Mr. Vance is also preparing notes and questions which
would be included in the text edition. The notes will
include a historical introduction to the period. The
questions are of two types. Easier questions could be
done orally and the more difficult questions would re-
quire essay-type answers.

Mr. Vance holds the Master of Arts degree from the Uni-
versity of Toronto. He is a member of the English De-
partment of Jarvis Collegiate in Toronto. Jarvis Collegiate
is considered to be one of the outstanding secondary schools
with a fine record of scholarship. He edited for us a
mythology texy entitled THE AGE OF HEROES. I sent you a
copy of this book which was constructed from MYTHOLOGY by
Edith Hamilton.

2 - Mr. Kyrill Schabert.

The general principle which Mr. Vance followed in making deletions was that as little as possible should be cut in order not to interfere with the work of the original author. Cuts were made because of length or because in his opinion certain portions might not appeal to a young reader in a classroom. The portions which were deleted can be classed under the following headings:

1. Laurel - Wulf romance references. (This still leaves Rafe - Laurel as a subject-plot.)

2. References to the Church that might seem unkins. (I think it should be borne in mind that many of the schools using the book would be staffed by Roman Catholic clergy or Nuns. In Canada we find that we must be very careful not to offend religious opinions or the opinions of the church held by certain groups.)

3. "Melodrama", or which might appear to be "melodrama" to Grades IX and X, that is, parts of intense emotion.

4. Portions that might suggest the hero was of a precious nature. (As you will realize, a class of Grade IX boys might take a view different from that of the average reader.)

I think Mr. Vance is an editor who is sensitive to the work of the original artist. He holds Bryher's writings in high regard. This is obvious or he would not have chosen THE FOURTEENTH OF OCTOBER. I have read the first two chapters of his edition version and his deletions seem to be justified.

Mr. Vance intends to be in New York City during the week following Christmas. If you wish to discuss any portions of the edited book with him, perhaps a meeting could be arranged during that week.

Meanwhile, we shall read THE FOURTEENTH OF OCTOBER, as edited. Then, when thy reading is finished, we shall be able to write you concerning publication of the possible text edition.

SJT/ch

(Marginal note in Mr. Schabert's hand) Norman: I find all this utterly distasteful. If Mr. V. holds Bryher in such high regard, why does he proceed to emasculate the work. Incidentally the book is recommended in the Sec. Ed. List of Massachusetts, without any such nonsense.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

8 May 1960

Dearest Fido,

I presume that a series of letters to you is the only solution,

starting with a sheer clearing of my desk after my return from Philadelphia,
everything bein so heaped and askew that I cannot see where I can put paper
down to begin the 1000-word review on Mark Twain, which, in addition to writing
a talk to be given tomorrow afternoon in Hartford, I must manage before the day
is out. The difficulty is that I have to read two of the books on Twain, and
re-read another before I start to write. Fortunately Susan is in Texas, so I
can stay night and day at the office. I did resketch the jacket material for
Ruan this morning (Helen wrote an excellent original draft, but we wanted a
slightly different emphasis at a point or two), and read a set of galleys for
a book of poems by an ex-student, who wanted a statement for the jacket and
advance announcements. I am really in a dizzy. Three dissertations and two
honors theses to be read before the week is out!

A set of pamhlets arrived: the St aul's Exhinson; the program
of Bergner's show; Galbreath's article (what a nice drawing); rather I should
have said 3 St Paul's exhibitions in all, plus the Order of Service for the
Coronation. For all of which, thanks. Also arrived for the collection of children's
books were three Fenns which I ordered from England: In the Mahdi's Grasp; King
Robert's Page' a d Shoulder Arms. None of which we had before.

A fine group of yellow envelopes came in just before I left at dawn on
Friday, full of interesting data. I do think the preliminary list for England is
invaluable, and I shall put the other lists with it when they arrive. This is
being nicely tidy. The various letters were various of course. Poor Alberto. I
do hope his Portuguese writing goes well. He does not mention Edith so much now;
is he seeing less of her?

You would have died of envy last Thursday, and how I wish you could
have been here with me. So little was made of the matter publicly, and no announce-
ment was made in the *ale* Bulletin, that I did not know until Ingholt called me
Wednesday night, that the 25th annual meeting of the Society for American
Archaeology was being held at Yale on Thursday-Saturday, and that Hele Larsen
and Jorgen Meldgaard from the Danush National Museum were to be here. Larsen
was the one we missed at Godthaab because he had gone in on a *Sarqaq* dig. Pastor
L told us much about him. Meldgaard is the only *ane* really digging now in the
upper Hudson Bay region, carrying on and refining the Thule expeditions work,
especially now that Thule has been put as modern modern than Dorset or *Sarqaq*.
Giddings was also there, my friend Henry Collins from the Smithsonian, three
men from the *Canadian* National Museum, etc etc. There was an entire morning'
session on Cultural relationships between the Arctic and Temperate Zones of
Noth America; so I was in seventh heaven. Ingholt who knows Larsen came over to
see him, and I invited both Larsen and Melgaard to the house for a drink later
in the afternoon. They came, and brought with them William *Laughlin*, a very knowledge
man from the University of Wisconsin. The latter left early, but they stayed until
seven when t took them to Mory's to meet Ingholt and dine with him as my guests--
since it was the day of the New Haven Flower show, of which Susan was chairman, and
which I naturally wanted to go to, and take her to dinner. They went over all
my artifacts and classified them for me. They were all much taken by the polar
bear from Spinks (Alaskan, they thought, and ethnological rather than anthro-
pological), and called the carved men ethnological from central Eskimos. They
were also very complimentary about several of the pieces which Brother -- sent

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

down, but these you haven't seen, not having been over really since we went
to Chesterfield. Over three years now isn't it since you have been here. I
hope it won't seem too strange if ever you should feel you could come again.
Anyhow I have sent you a copy of the program, but nothing would take the place
of the good conversation about the north. I will try to remember later on. I
asked about Vibaek, and they said he had been widely happy with his Orkney visit,
and hoped some time to be able to go again. I suppose the first trip was more of
an eye-opener than a data-filler. Curious that the Danes should not want to do
more in the Orkneys etc., or would the British be rather against foreigners doing
this sort of thing?

The flower show seemed to be a huge success, and Susan won several ribbons
in horticulture, including a blue ribbon for Susan Pearson, the first time she has
showed it here. She also won a blue ribbon for her flower arrangement, which I
must say she had to toss together because of lack of time. Now she is gone to
Houston, Texas, from which she returns on Friday, the day Hilda comes. I shall
not try to meet Susan, but let her work her way into New York by bus and back by
train here, so that I can either go out with the Schaffner's (if John is on jury
duty) or be at the hotel to greet her at noon or for tea. Next saturday the New
York Horticultural Society is making a two-day bus trip of this area, and Susan
has had to arrange details and will have to be with the bus both on Saturday and
Sunday. I shall have to go on Sunday when they go to Guilford.

I am really exhausted, but a month more and the worst of the school year
will be done. I shall probably not be able to get much work done until the
beginning of July, but then must settle in to mind my P's and Q's.

All love,

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

11 May 1960

Dearest Fido,

I do as I oughtn't to, and break off at 11:30--in the midst of a dissertation--to write a sort of toast to your freedom on your return to Kenwin. You and I each love our burdens too much to want to give them up permanently, and want to be wanted. Nevertheless there are moments when it is gold to be free, as I hope you will feel. I should think you might write a secret opera bouffe about the departure--although, I must admit--I shall have to see Hilda on this side before I will quite believe it.

I have made certain changes. The suite is at the back, etc. But after Blanche was to be not too near; then near, but not really near; and finally nearissima; I gave up. There will be Dubonnet not chianti. The t.v. goes with the room, and she can put it on when she wants, so I did not worry about its being there. etc etc etc. The plan now seems to be that John, being free of jury duty (he hopes) will take Perdita out by car, but I will not go to the airport, the room not being that great. I shall be at the hotel waiting for them, speak to her briefly, then let her rest presumably, and come back at tea time if she wants. Susan will meanwhile have come in at International, back from Texas, and wend her own way to New Haven. She has a rough two days over the weekend.

I will call Prutting now that I know he can say he heard from you. I shall try to get him to leave his card, so to speak. We will pick up as indicated. I shall not forget. But I want to get her through the ordeal.

You ask about Leda's Swan. Is it age? I suppose it is a number of things. I should think it was, really, more temperament. As between us, Hilda does of course crave attention, praise, affection, even a certain eroticism. Fortunately Heydt provided all of these for her; his marriage was a true trahison. I see this more and more. Actually I still think he married in part to escape, from Hilda, Joan and the rest. But it is age too, because there is this ease of fantasy which comes then to some. It will not come quite this way to you, I think; you have a different psyche. So when the Swan spreads his wings and tickles her with his preposterous beak (words which say she is a goddess) he makes her feel a goddess again, as perhaps Marie Corelli dreamed at Stratford-on-Avon. The Swan is incredible, but not I think any harm to her. Duncan too may be useful and no harm, if she can strike up correspondence with them or either. I think we had better be grateful if she has these outlets.

I will write Aldington, of course.

The tooth (mine)? Yes, they saved it. And I am all ready for the Mackenzie when the Notebooks are finished. But this summer I must stick to them.

I am really worried about Elsie, although always tempted to think it a matter for p.a.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

Sorry too about *Artemis* and Collins. Yet somehow I think you
yourself feel it is not quite ready, that you are not quite sure of what
to do with it in the way of structuring or capturing this more difficult
middle section (without a personal theme to complement the first section).
So you do other things like *Sikelia*. *Artemis* is too important; you're
right not to hurry it.

Don't worry about Spink and the bear. Carlebach is sending up a
couple of examples of a collection of what he calls Eskimo masquerés in
ivory. I'm sure that's not a very scientific name for them. I said I would
be glad to look at them, but please only the best. If one seems worth having
shall I bay in place of the Spinkette?

Am eager for you to get to London for all the dirt. I am told the
t.v was excellent technically, and full of schmalz in the best royal family.
Yes, you must find out about the "extraordinary scandal."

Hodgson's *The Skylark* is now out in a trade edition, and I bought
to put alongside the others. When you come out in the fall, don't you
think we should pay him a quick visit. We might fly to Ohio and then hire
a drive-it-yourself car. I did not send Hodgson a *Madrigal*. Somehow it
doesn't seem his cup of tea. No idea how it is selling. There were the
two Sunday reviews and *Newsweek*. So far none of the other papers or magazines
have touched it, and some will not I fear. Orville Prescott didn't seem to
dig it, I gather; at least only silence.

I saved, until Hilda, was safely out of Switzerland--lest the temptation
to tell be too great for you--the thermofax that Grove sent me of what must
have been a press release by them:

"HE HAD FLAMED
around her, he was red-hot
lava." A stirring novel of the
London in 1917, a "madrigal of
wartime love and death." The famed
poet and novelist H.D. terms her
newest "BID ME TO LIVE." Julia "finds"
herself -- and the book is a find too.
Out April 28. (Grove, N.Y. $3.50).

HOW'S THAT?

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

14 May 1960

Dearest Fido,

Well, our Hilda is here and safe, and I should judge happy. You will of course hear all details many times over, and more at first-hand than from me. But Perdita being busy today with at least one party which at least one child must attend, I can write. She and John met Hilda and Blanche at the airport, the plane coming at 9:30 by good luck since the field closed in thereafter until noon. A wheelchair was at the plane; they got nicely through customs, and exchanged joy over the stimulation of Idlewild—at least John and Hilda did,--and then drove in. The ride over was apparently pleasant although not exciting. No one got off the plane, so Blanche was without brandy. They were offered champagne by Swiss-air with late-breakfast mushrooms on toast, but only Blanche of all them on board got what she ordered in advance from the mailed menu. Hers was deluxe to her delight, with a little printed card saying it had been cooked for Miss Blanche Brunner by the greatest chef of all Switzerland. Why no one else got what they had asked, or such a card I don't know. Perhaps because she was Swiss, or perhaps they give only one in fifty her choice, like some lottery.

I arrived at 12:30 at the hotel, having forgotten there no longer was a 10:00 o'clock train; but actually it was just as well, for Hilda had unpacked, and taken a bath and was dressing when I got there, and had the worst first of the journey off her back. She was excited of course but well in control, and of course Blanche is a jewel from heaven--not only in personal attractiveness but in common sense. It is as though the gods sent her. Hilda wanted to go downstairs for lunch; we did, and had a daiquerie apiece, plus a delicious chicken pot pie, and I think Hilda's eye and stomach lit up at the change of food. The waiters were all pleasant, and I explained that Mrs A would be there for some weeks. She has a nice, small suite at the back, and it will I think work out well. Alas, I found it will cost 35 a day, but I seriously feel it is worth it for this three-year fling. Yesterday afternoon she made tea in her little kitchen, has two bottles of Dubonnet which Pup bought as from Susan and myself, oranges, milk etc. And a place where she can receive. Later, on another time, she can perhaps work into something more modest, but I think she likes it and deserves it. There was much flurry about the letter from you, which she thought she had given John, but which by telephoning I found she still had, and after lunch (about two-thirty) I left her and went downtown to Pantheon, the trip made easier by your message. She wanted me back, and I returned at five. Pup was there, looking very well, and Robert DUNcan who had brought yellow iris, and Blanche (who fits in well everywhere. Do tell her father how pleased Hilda seems to be.

Hilda makes plans for the movies and the Metropolitan, and was actually in much better physical condition than I had gotten to believe. I am thinking especially of her walking, for in fact she walks better than when I last saw her. She had no trouble getting downstairs to lunch (I had suggested lunch in the room), and insisted on walking to the elevator with me when I left. So perhaps she will actually go with Hilda Susan to buy her hat on Monday, when Susan goes to New York.

Was delighted to read in a summary of Faulkner's talks to students at the University of Virginia about
Eliot, culture etc, as follows:

Q. Then you believe that Mr. Eliot underestimates this culture, apparently?

A. No no. That he's perfectly right—I'm perfectly willing for him to have his opinion, but to me I ain't interested in it.

Which is a serious, but short, story.

By waiting until after 10:00 before taking the train I had the copy you sent of Hilda's acceptance speech. I was most grateful, for I was a little worried about it. It has excellent material in it, although at moments difficult to follow. Alas, for my sake and her kindness, my name must come out of it; and since the prize is being given in theory to an American resident (which they are winking at) I doubt we ought to underscore the truth by publishing forever that she wrote it under a spreading chestnut tree in Switzerland. I suspect she had the Newsweek swans in mind. But she is to accept it in New York, writing it ahead being only an accident.

I do thank you for the letter, which made the long trip downtown worthwhile at least in some conclusion. Alas, I do not lay my hand on it at just this moment, so I comment from memory. Naturally I grieve at whatever unhappiness caused, and dare say I preferred the second to the first. At any rate I brought my copy of the manuscript back with me, and will send on to you for Collins, or directly to them, as you or Helen direct. The New York office said that Kurt was handling this, and would probably have come to some understanding when he was in London just now. I gather one is to try to get at the galleys as soon as possible, for a September publication, because of the printers' summer holidays. It would be convenient to keep my copy until at least the galleys have come, but I am glad to send now. All changes were made tentatively in the margin, have been erased, and it will go to them as it came to me. I was asked at Pantheon whether you wanted to see galleys, and said I would ask you. I left all matters of punctuation to them, after they had collated my queries. They have a very few textual questions of one sort or another, and I suggested that Holsaert send them to you or Helen. The vast majority of their editorial queries I simply threw out, leaving them some for dignity and some because I was not sure myself. It will take you ten minutes to answer.

Thanks for the locations on the Irish and Welch coast. The spots were as I told them I thought it would be, remembering the cruise. But I preferred to ask. I think probably no names on the map, for the towns, just the right headlands and capes.

Yes, of course you were over in the late fall of 1958. Everything just seems so long ago! Forgive me for my lonely cries.

I will write Aldington and Heydt. Was much amused by Catha's letter. A nice child, and I am glad she had her touch of Paris. But she is a provincial virgin in the best sense of the word. Paris is not for her; her father was right for the wrong reasons.

Was the wraith-child inscribed to Hilda (by the onewho does the postcards, I think) an original pencil sketch? It is most attractive, and should perhaps be put into tissuepaper to keep from smudging.

This has been such a hectic season that I wonder if I ever thanked you for the Sandburg letters etc, as from Doris. If not, I do. Margery speaks of a letter from Judith M about her father, but you did not include. On purpose? Glad also for the Special List, England.

A nice letter from the Spinks about the ice bear.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 May 1960

Dearest Fido:

It is after ten at night, so this can be only a note from the office before I go home. Only I had wanted to write you this morning, after Susan's visit to New York, and so must really now if I am to drive downtown by the postoffice so you will not have to wait too long. Hilda says she writes each day, but I know you will want independent reports.

Keep your fingers crossed, but our Hilda seems to be enjoying herself immensely. She was in great spirits yesterday morning when Susan went to the Stanhope to meet her, showed Susan her suite with great pride, and spoke of how wonderful the food was. She is really eating, as I saw on Friday's lunch. They all went to Sak's, and Hilda found herself a hat which she felt was "hers," being very giddy about trying it on, and having a lark out of the whole affair. On the way out, she saw a pink hat she thought might be fun to have, but decided to make a special excursion to get it, as well as to buy a pair of shoes she wanted. I gather she has one "do" a day. She managed quite easily to get in and out of the cab and store, and--as I told you--she really maneuvers much better than I remembered her being able to do.

Her visit to the Metropolitan was a great success, and I was pleased that she was willing to take a chair to get around the chief distances. She had protested to me against it, I had said (not quite truthfully) that I never minded wheelchairs, but of course some people did, but must have given in chiefly because I had said for her not to, if she didn't want to.

She sent back the redraft of her acceptance speech, so that it is off to the Academy. I enclose a copy for your interest; you will see that the tone of it, and most of the words, are hers. I only hope I did not make it too barbaric. I think it will be easier for her to read without stumbling over her tongue.

Your immaculate copy of the typescript of *Ruan*, without any changes in it at all is ready for you; but since you suggest that Collins is going to do *Artemis* first, perhaps I will keep this copy for a guide to the galleys when they come. Do not forget to tell me if you want to see galleys, and where to send them if you are in England. I suppose they will hope that you can get them back with some speed because of the September publication date.

On the question of British versus American novels at the moment, it may be because of punctuation--this would take research--but I really think it is because the American fiction writer is in a deep slump--really as I think the poets are too. The British have a liveliness of material and a sense of rebellion. Actually the American publishers are gobbling up every British young novelist they can find, and the critics are being even over-generous. No, there is a better reason than semi-colons!

I will go down for lunch on Sunday. I am letting most things slide until *after* the award, in order to take one thing at a time. So Prutting et al has not been mentioned. I will, but want her to enjoy her freedom for the moment.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

Oh yes, I forgot to pat myself for remembering about Hilda's hair--for the award day--she not being as lucky as you in that respect--and Susan suggested that they could come to her from the Waldorf. Not at all! Hilda wants to go to them--for the fun of it--and so she is making an appointment. I am a little frightened, really. Everything goes so well that I wonder if the luck will hold. Pup and John have been fine, and Hilda thinks the children are fine, each in its way.

I wrote Gladys inviting her to come to New Haven on her visit, but she wrote back saying she was flying directly to Los Angeles and back again. I really should have enjoyed seeing her, and will regret that she can't come.

In a way I am sorry you have to go out to the Scillies so soon, but you do deserve a real rest and as carefree a time as you can have. Do enjoy your freedom too, my dear.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

17 May 1960

Dearest Fido,

My letters to you seem to be night-bloomers, for again
it is late at the office where I have come after the senior dinner at
Jonathan Edwards College (where I am a Fellow). The afternoon was
spent from one o'clock on at luncheon and at the private preview of
another mammoth and impressive show of art owned by Yale graduates. I
of course do not own that sort of art, but Susan and I were asked and
had to attend because of my chairmanship of American Studdies and membership
on a committee for colonial American art in the gallery. There was also
the opening of the new display of colonial silver. It was all very gala
and very exhausting.

I should not write about that, but I do think you will be pleased
and happy that when I talked with Hilda on the phone this morning she told
me that she had made an appointment with Dr Prutting for next Monday morning.
She was a little hysterical about the excitement of having made such a move
on her own account. It is because of conflicting advice as to whether she
should or should not walk, as told her in Switzerland. Prutting said to her
over the phone that his advice was to walk; the sound of his voice consoled
her. Obviously she trusts him. I had made no move in his direction until
after the award, so as not to seem to push her. Now, however, I have written
Prutting at length about the situation, saying that I hoped he could manage
a more or less complete check-up, in a clinic or at his office as it seemed
best to him, and that the bill could be sent her or secretly divided between
her and me again as he thought best. I said I should like to talk to him, or
hear from him when he was through. I also said there was no need, of course,
to mention my letter to her. All this is most pleasant, especially since it
comes from her own volition.

Similarly if I were you I should not mention either he return or
her continued stay in your letters. Hilda has funny human ubiquitous qualities
of not wanting to be pushed; my scheme, insofar as it is successful, is to
plant seeds and then let her tears water them. It has worked so far with the
speech of acceptance, with the wheelchair at the Metropilitan, and a few other
details. I hope it will continue to.

Now she is in a tizzy saying she cannot sit on the platform unless
I do. That is of course impossible, but we will settle it all on Sunday. I shall
go down Sunday morning and have lunch with them, and take a midafternoon train
back. It is the only possible time this week. (Alas, I have not been able to
see my mother for over a month, and probably cannot until after Hilda leaves.)
Then we go down Tuesday afternoon and stay through Wednesday night. I will try
to have Rosset (of Grove) there for cocktails Tuesday afternoon. He has just
sent her "hundreds of roses." "WHAT WILL I DO?" This seems to be it.

"Freedom!" you write, and then "at the moment I am deep in intensive
work", as though the chance to do this were not the greatest freedom of all!

No, *Artemis* will turn out beautifully. You always forget that a
book is a work of art, and takes time and luck.

Al爱. Norman

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

20 May 1960

Dearest Fido,

I talked with Hilda on the phone this morning, and am glad I planned to go down this Sunday. She is nervous as a witch. What a lucky thing for you that you are not with her. I should have had to choose next Wednesday between going to the Academy for her prize, or to the Heavenly Rest Parlors for your funeral. It is really working out in the best way for whatever result God chooses to let us have. Blanche is not implicated, and Hilda is happily talking to her about the "difficulties" of Kusnacht. It seems that Blanche's mother is from Luxembourg(?) and has felt out of it all her life because of her French. Also that there were rumors, and some talk, about Blanche being the perfect wife for Heydt. All this much happier as a topic of conversation that you or I would have been able to supply. Hilda is tense about failing us, and disgracing us. It is all natural enough. I think she is going to ask Prutting for a tranquilizer on Monday. Monday afternoon she is seeing the Gregories and, arranged separately, a reporter from the *Herald Tribune*. Fortunately she does not talk of *not going*, only of disgrace.

Roseett, of Grove, is having drinks with us Tuesday afternoon, so that will be out of the way for Hilda. Grove was a little distressed at not having a ticket for the Academy, but what could I do? It was rather a mess anyhow. Somehow Hilda told them she would need only two, for John and Pup, plus hers and mine. I had the idea she would have four. Rather shabbily, I thought, they sent two general admission seats for the Schaffners. Fortunately over the phone I mentioned the four seats, and at any rate have now rescued another pair (not good but at least reserved) for Susan and Blanche (who I think should go, so she can talk it over afterwards). Whether I will be able to get Hilda to the luncheon beforehand remains to be seen. I make no bets.

Many thanks for your good letter of the 17th. We will see what gives re Hilda after the award and post-Prutting.

The Laurie Lee came safely. Yes, I remember Jean Burton. We spoke of her many times; I am not sure I did not correspond with her.

Have asked to have a set of galleys put aside for Doris, and will send them as indicated when they are ready. Because they are for her, I asked to have them cut and laced together so she can read them more easily like a book. The long sheets are intolerable, except for business. Presumably better to go directly to her on the Scillies.

Holsaert sent along a copy of his queries, and your letter to him.

Must correct your beat talk a little. To "dig" something is to find it one's cup of tea; so of course for you to say "I don't think you dig me" is not correct, for you are my cup of tea, my glass of milk, my hunk of whalemeat.

I was deeply interested, however, in what you said about the vital importance of being there first, for anything. Of course you are first, for *The Player's Boy* (no one had given that world before), and first for *Beowulf*, and first for *Roman Wall*, and first now for *Ruan*. But this is not simply a question of timing for you--that is the protective gesture. It is something deeper than that, and that is why it interests you. Does it have something to do with your father, being as it were like him, like his true son?, when you say "the thing that matters to me is that it's out first." As you say yourself it is something much deeper than writing, as you say it has nothing to do with writing. This is what fascinates me.

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

How I regret that Alberto is not to be in London when you are there.
Perhaps now that you are going earlier, he will not have left. I should love
all his suggested dirt about the wedding. In every account there seems to be
hints of royal unrest and disapproval. I should think on the British side chiefly
because of Philip who will, if any one does, restore the traditional aloofness
of the monarchy it will be. It is always the parvenu who assert the dignity
from within. And this slays me, because--from without--I am all for something more
than a musical comedy throne. For foreign royalty and their snubbing, I feel
pretty sure it is because she did turn down the Norwegian Crown Prince, and various
royal etceteras. But you must pass on what you can get. This is not Gerald's dish.

Much interested too in Sylva Norman's new house in Portugal. I rather
think this will answer her problem.

A ghastly week. Wednesday the all-afternoon vernissage for the new art
show, and yesterday the dedication of the new Yale Press Building. I seem required
to kiss corner-stones. Today is pleasant, but a little sad: a party in honor of
Mrs Wohlenberg and her departure from being secretary. The graduate students and
staff are giving it to her. Actually she works until July 1st, but the students
(thank God) and most of the staff (the lucky ones) will have left by then for their
summer holidays.

All love,
Norman

One of the dissertations read, so far!

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

29 May 1960

Oh my poor dear Fido,

I did not want to wait until today to write you about the Award, but only now at the end of Sunday afternoon have I finished the dissertations, year essays and seminar papers that must be done before tomorrow morning when we begin our departmental meetings to recommend for degrees. A number of papers are still missing. I hope they won't come in late tonight! And there have been complications of this sort and that among the graduate students and faculty, until I felt like a resident psychiatrist. At any rate I have hardly left my office since I got back from New York Thursday noon, and even my nights until eleven have been spent here. This will be at least an explanation of my silence. Susan's letter will have helped.

We drove down to New York on Tuesday afternoon, arriving about quarter-to-four, and went to Hilda's room, where Pup already was waiting our arrival to take Blanche to the films to see *Hiroshima--Mon Amour*. We had tea until five when Rossett was to come; but a little after, the office called to say he could not arrived until six. So they went off, and then to Perdita's for dinner, so that Susan and I could dine alone with Hilda--a pleasant change for both Blanche and Hilda, altho they get along together swimmingly. Rossett finally arrived at six-thirty, and Hilda insisted he come to her room, for she likes the idea of being hostess and is doing it very nicely indeed. She could not have been nicer to him, praised the jacket and blurb, thanked for the roses, paid little compliments here and there. And he beamed. We plan a little party for his staff afterwards. Perhaps Hilda was playing the role of Dame Edith, but she did it even more charmingly.

We went to dinner about seven-thirty, Rossett making his departure, and at nine we left Hilda for the night, Blanche already having returned. I spoke again about how much I wanted to go to the Academy luncheon, and I told her that I would give Van Doren a copy of her acceptance, so that if she decided she didn't feel she could do it herself he would simply take it out of his pocket and explain that she had asked him to read it for her. The "loophole" she always wants.

Wednesday morning I had arranged to go to the Museum of Natural History to see the Exkimo Curator about the ivory masks, and so left shortly after nine while Susan went to sit with the other two and carry on convocation about what I was doing and why and anything else to keep Hilda from mooding. I did my business, decided that I didn't want one of the masks, which were apparently not so old as claimed, and in all likelihood were doll-heads. Then I returned them to Arlebach, but found two or three very inexpensive Punuk ivory spearheads which are much more our cup of tea, and had them put aside until I get down again. It was ten-thirty, and Susan left for her hairdressing as I came back, so that Hilda and I had an hour before she wanted to begin to dress. She did want company, and we went over this and that, and had an orange juice, and assured each other that white shoes were all right, and that the blue hat was lovely, and that Van Doren would have the copy of her speach, and that two hours wasn't very long on the platform, and that it meant so much to me to go to the luncheon (she kept saying to Blanche, the latter told me, that she couldn't understand why it meant so much to me; but Blanche got the point), and she volunteered that she wouldn't miss the garden party afterwards for anything.

So at twelve-ten I came down again, and she had on a corsage from Pup and John (which I suggested to them they send, and which delighted Hilda), and we took a taxi and drove north along the river, and she sat there as calmly as though she was going

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

to the market for carrots. She got out of the taxi to be greeted by Leonie Adams who had once called on her in London, and then--even before she got off the sidewalk--by Thornton Wilder and his sister, and Hilda told him how disappointed she once was when he spoke German on the radio (she had told it to me several times, and no doubt to you). We went inside, left the blue Stanford wrap she brought for good luck, took the elevator upstairs to the cocktail room, and then she held court. She had a whirl, sitting in a corner of the room while people came up to salute her. I scurried and brought people I thought would interest her, and it was a pleasant melange for a half or three quarters of an hour, while she drank several sherries, but had more vitality to begin with than she needed. Aiken came up, and Djuna Barnes and Kay Boyle, Van Wyck Brooks, Marchette Chute, John Ciardi, Malcom Cowley, Richard Eberhart, John Hersey, MacLeish, Theodore Roethke, Mark Van Doren, Glenway Wescott, Richard Wilbur, Peter Blume (the artist), Elliott Carter (the composer), Douglas Moore (composer), Quincey Porter (composer), Virgil Thompson (composer) Clare Leighton (the artist), and God knows how many others approached under their own steam. She had her picture taken with Van Doren, I took him aside and briefed him, he expressed fear of the podium which was small and steep, but I said don't tell her and she'll make it, and then it was time for luncheon,

We had gone up by elevator, but the elevator had now broken down. But Hilda was not phased at all. And surrounded by Wescott who was at his most charming, Moore and a number of others, like a girl at her debut she descended the curving marble steps to the luncheon room. She sat at the head table, and when I saw her afterwards as she was doing the stairs over again for the meeting itself she was still buoyed by the excitement. She held court in the lady's room for a while and then went on the stage, sitting in the front row, while I luckily had a seat in the front row of the audience, directly beneath her so I could gaze up in comfort (if necessary). It really wasn't necessary. The program went on and on and on, and finally it got to the end and her time. Mark Van Doren rose from his seat next to her and went to the podium to make his presentation. Then, like a bolt from a rifle, up rose Hilda, without her crutches leaped to the podium while Van Doren repeated, crouched over the desk, and began to accept the prize which had not yet been awarded. Suddenly she realized she was too soon, looked at Van Doren and he motioned her to go on. It was so intense and so sincere on her part that it quite won over the audience and they applauded wildly and genuinely when she took her seat. Then Mark gave his talk, and he had made it such, as well as including a poem which he read of hers, that it came quite as well after as before. And since, if one might whisper it, Hilda forgot about the microphone so few could hear a word of what she said, it was almost better to end the program with her poem, as we did.

We then went upstairs to the terrace to the terrace for the reception, and again Hilda was besieged but this time by the general public--a Portuguese poet who had translated her things, a woman who had been read "Orchard" at the age of nine by her older brother, and the like. Finally she went inside to the exhibition room where she took a chair out of the light, and women knelt at her feet while she uttered wise sayings. Or so Susan says. I was outside most of the time trying to find (unsuccessfully) people who had asked to meet her. About a quarter to six, Susan came out to fetch me, and we went back to the hotel, where John and 'erdita joined us a little later for drinks, while Hilda had strong balck tea.

You will see the medal, I think. There was a little presentation to me after we had gathered for black tea and bourbon on the rocks, but I suggested she keep it for overnight, and that--perhaps--it might be wise to keep it for a few days in case people wanted to see it. The next morning, quite as though it were her own idea, she said that perhaps she ought--just for a few days---; and then a little later--I suppose I ought

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

231 HGS

really to take it back to Switzerland to show Bryher. And then still a little later--
you know, she said, I really do like that medal!

Later we had dinner together at the Stanhope, and I ordered some champagne
to drink with desert--for Hilda had said, apropos of what she would have if she were
condemned to death and had to order a last meal, that for her it would be champagne.
The murderer I had cited, just done in Connecticut, ordered a double banana split
and rasberry soda. And it was very gay, and we sent you the wire, and Hilda was
infinitely happy we all thought. We rose from the table about half-past nine, and she
went to bed, while the Schaffners and Blanche came to our room for an hour while we
exchanged mutual congratulations and blessed you.

It really did go off awfully well, I think. The only slight awkwardness came--
or so I thought--at the cocktail time before lunch, when I found Marianne standing in
exactly the far opposite corner of the room from our Hilda. She was telling Thornton how
Mrs Watson, of Rochester, had given her the fox fur she was wearing, and the diamond broach
she was wearing, and wasn't it nice of Mrs Watson, etc., when I quite literally dragged
her through the crowd to Hilda's nest. But, oh, dear, Hilda was talking to Elizabeth
Bowen, and hardly did more than acknowledge Marianne's presence, and I had a feeling that
it wasn't like a college reunion. Susan said Marianne and a friend came in the exhibition
hall while Hilda was enthroned, walked around, but didn't let Hilda know she was there.
We will see. It was more amusing than otherwise.

And what mattered most was that when Hilda had been given her medal, Leger (who
was sitting behind her) leaned over and before the 1500 in the audience, kissed her hand.
And he had kissed it once before at luncheon. No wonder they called the next day
Ascension Day!

Speaking of college reunions I was horrified to discover, as I told you, that
Hilda had done nothing about the letter from the President of Bryn Mawr, suggesting that
Mary herr might take the commendation in Hilda's place. Or perhaps I wrote you about
phoning Bryn Mawr earlier in the week. Hilda seemed shocked that I hand't done anything
about it, but I didn't even know of the idea. Anyhow I called Mary by phone to ask her if
she would, and she is thrilled at the idea, genuinely so I feel sure. And I have since
phoned Bryn Mawr so that they can make an official invitation to Mary, and finish it off.
Mary will come to present to Hilda the commendation.

I spoke to Hila on the phone this morning, and she said she had been a good cat
and gone to the second doctor and had a series of eight x-rays taken over a period of
two hours. This is splendid. Just what I asked Prutting to do but which of course he
would have done anyhow. She continues to have wonderful confidence in him.

Melitta was to come to tea this afternoon, and Jean Untermeyer had come yesterday.
She has invited a younger woman poet, Denise Evertov, to come tomorrow. Jean she found
pretty heavy, and asked if she might beg off a dinner chez Jeannie with the Urzidels in
attendance too. I said yes. Teas at her own pied-a-terre are easier to control.

Hilda I am sure will be going back to Switzerland as planned. Altho anything
can happen. But I should also be surprised if she has not, pretty much made up her mind
to come over to this side, gradually if not immediately. We are well back as if before the
break, and in much better shape now than then, from an emotional point of view. The only
very important thing is that she must not be urged to come over here. There is plenty of
time for her to make up her own mind. As to funds, it is important to let her pay her
own bills, to get a sense of what is up, as well as the confidence of being her own
mistress. I think she is revelling in this oddly enough since we both have done things for
her only to make it easier for her. She has seven thousand in the Chemical, and I tell her
to draw on that, and one can talk about plans with her brother later on when one sees how
things are. Her bills are expensive (bete but of course are for two), but the convenience
is so important, and this is after all a holiday. If the two go out to Long Island for a

NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

week or two that will save. But I tell John and Pup not until after Prutting. They
are being very good indeed; you would be pleased.

Several books have come in. An Edith and another I have forgotten, having taken
it home.

Almost too many letters in from you to answer. And it is now six o'clock and I
simply cannot do the political commentary which I shall try to write tomorrow if I can.
I did not duck it. But I want to take this to the post office to get off more
quickly. Yes Durrell's poems, by all means, if you have an extra copy. Otherwise better
wait. No, no need to sell the Elizabethans, though it is always a possibility (like
Gertrude's pictures) if direly necessary. I should miss them too much otherwise. They
have become part of my living, and if I read it is from them rather than science fiction
at the moment.

As you know, the letters are pouring in to Hilda now. Mine were not held up.
I am not sure what could have happened.

The Goughs should not worry about Turkey. The revolution, if that is the word,
puts things as they were before. There was a personal issue, my Turks say. Nice that
Beney is married, but it is rather a lot to take on. One would think a little more freedom
would be useful.

Will get after the book on the stars, and write you about the suggestions from
Holsaert tomorrow.

But meanwhile, all, all, all, allll, ailllll, aillllllll love

Norman

I am a little exhausted by all, at the Academy, but very pleased.

29 May 1960

Oh my poor dear Fido,

Wednesday morning I had arranged to go to the Museum of Natural History to see the Eskimo Curator about the Ivory masks, and so left shortly after nine while Susan went to sit with the other two and carry on conversation about what I was doing and why and anything else to keep Hilda from mooding. I did my business, decided that I didn't want one of the masks, which were apparently not so old as claimed, and in all likelihood were doll-heads. Then I returned them to Charlebach, but found two or three very inexpensive Punuk ivory spearheads which are much more our cup of tea, and had them put aside until I get down again. It was ten-thirty, and Susan left for her hairdressing as I came back, so that Hilda and I had an hour before she wanted to begin to dress. She did want company, and we went over this and that, and had an orange juice, and assured each other that white shoes were all right, and that the blue hat was lovely, and that Van Doren would have the copy of her speach, and that two hours wasn't very long on the platform, and that it meant so much to me to go to the luncheon (she kept saying to Blanche, the latter told me, that she couldn't understand why it meant so much to me; but Blanche got the point), and she volunteered that she wouldn't miss the garden party afterwards for anything.

So at twelve-ten I came down again, and she had on a corsage from Pup and John (which I suggested to them they send, and which delighted Hilda), and we took a taxi and drove north along the river, and she sat there as calmly as though she we going

to the market for carrots. She got out of the taxi to be greeted by Leonie Adams who had once called on her in London, and then--even before she got off the sidewalk--by Thornton Wilder and his sister, and Hilda told him how disappointed she once was when he spoke German on the radio (she had told it to me several times, and no doubt to you). We went inside, left the blue Staatford wrap she brought for good luck, took the elevator upstairs to the cocktail room, and then she held court. She had a whirl, sitting in a corner of the room while people came up to salute her. I scurried and brought people I thought would interest her, and it was a pleasant melange for a half or three quarters of an hour, while she drank several sherries, but had more vitality to begin with than she needed. Aiken came up, and Djuna Barnes and Kay Boyle, Van Wyck Brooks, Marchette Chute, John Ciardi, Malcom Cowley, Richard Eberhart, John Hersey, MacLeish Theodore Roethke, Mark Van Doren, Glenway Wescott, Richard Wilbur, Peter Blume (the artist), Elliott Carter (the composer), Douglas Moore (composer), Quincey Porter (composer), Virgil Thompson (composer) Clare Leighton (the artist), and God knows how many others approached under their own steam. She had her picture taken with Van Doren, I took him aside and briefed him, he expressed fear of the podium which was small and steep, but I said don't tell her and she'll make it, and then it was time for luncheon,

We then went upstairs to the terrace to the terrace for the reception, and again Hilda was besieged but this time by the general public--a Portuguese poet who had translated her things, a woman who had been read "Orchard" at the age of nine by her older brother, and the like. Finally she went inside to the exhibition room where she took a chair out of the light, and women knelt at her feet while she uttered wise sayings. Or so Susan says. I was outside most of the time trying to find (unsuccessfully) people who had asked to meet her. About a quarter to six, Susan came out to fetch me, and we went back to the hotel, where John and Erdita joined us a little later for drinks, while Hilda had strong balck tea.

Later we had dinner together at the Stanhope, and I ordered some champagne
to drink with desert--for Hilda had said, apropos of what she would have if she were
condemned to death and had to order a last meal, that for her it would be champagne.
The murderer I had cited, just done in in Connecticut, ordered a double banana split
and rasberry soda. And it was very gay, and we sent you the wire, and Hilda was
infinitely happy we all thought. We rose from the table about half-past nine, and she
went to bed, while the Schaffners and Blanche came to our room for an hour while we
exchanged mutual congratulations and blessed you.

Speaking of college reunions I was horrified to discover, as I told you, that
Hilda had done nothing about the letter from the President of Bryn Mawr, suggesting that
Mary herr might take the commendation in Hilda's place. Or perhaps I wrote you about
phoning Bryn Mawr earlier in the week. Hilda seemed shocked that I hand't done anything
about it, but I didn't even know of the idea. Anyhow I called Mary by phone to ask her if
she would, and she is thrilled at the idea, genuinely sorry I feel sure. And I have since
phoned Bryn Mawr so that they can make an official invitation to Mary, and finish it off.
Mary will come to present to Hilda the commendation.

I spoke to Hilda on the phone this morning, and she said she had been a good cat
and gone to the second doctor and had a series of eight x-rays taken over a period of
two hours. This is splendid. Just what I asked Prutting to do however, of course he
would have done anyhow. She continues to have wonderful confidence in him.

Mellitta was to come to tea this afternoon, and Jean Untermeyer had come yesterday.
She has invited a younger woman poet, Denise Evertov, to come tomorrow. Jean she found
pretty heavy, and asked if she might beg off a dinner chez Jeannie with the Urzidels in
attendance too. I said yes. Teas at her own pied-a-terre are easier to control.

["week or two that will save. But I tell John and Pup not until after Prutting. They\nare being very good indeed; you would be pleased.", "Several books have come in. An Edith and another I have forgotten, having taken\nit home.", "Almost too many letters in from you to answer. And it is now six o'clock and I\nsimply cannot do the political commentary which I shall try to write tomorrow if I can.\nI did not duck it. But I want to take this to the post office to get off more\nquickly. 'Es Durrell's poems, by all means, if you have an extra copy. Otherwise better\nwait. No, no need to sell the Elizabethans, though it is always a possibility (like\nGertrude's pictures) if direly necessary. I should miss them too much otherwise. They\nhave become part of my living, and if I read it is from them rather than science fiction\nat the moment.", "As you know, the letters are pouring in to Hilda now. Mine were not held up.\nI am not sure what could have happened.", "The Goughs should not worry about Turkey. The revolution, if that is the word,\nputs things as they were before. There was a personal issue, my Turks say. Nice that\nBeney is married, but it is rather a lot to take on. One would think a little more freedom\nwould be useful.", "Will get after the book on the stars, and write you about the suggestions from\nHolsaert tomorrow.", "But meanwhile, all, all, all, allll, ailllll, aillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll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NORMAN
HOLMES
PEARSON

9 June 1960

Dearest Fido,

Of course it would happen, and so after my long letter describing the Award there has been only silence to you. Will this reach you before you leave the Sesame? I hope so. That is why I begin this even at 9:30 at night at the office, and will take it to the postoffice by hand on my way home so that it can, hopefully, catch one plane earlier. What have I been doing? 22 mss of books of poetry from last Thursday until last Saturday. Students becoming little psychotic devils; faculty members letting down their hair to show intellectual and moral dandruff; administration officials becoming expectedly petty. And so on and so on and so on. So that, I could not go to see Hilda on Sunday, had forgotten I said I would try to as of ten days before, and the poor thing waited in her room with champagne at lunch and then alone in the dining room of the Stanhope, while Blanche went to Long Island for the weekend with the Schaffners. Anyhow I tried to make amends by taking a late afternoon train down Tuesday so that I could have dinner with them and take the nine o'clock train back to New Haven. I fear I was too tired to be jolly company, but at least I could see them.

Hilda remains in good control of herself, and manages more and more on her own. As I tell her, now you see you can do anything by yourself. Well, she can't quite. Blanche has to help her with shoes, and Hilda admits to being tired. It is after all nearly a month since she left, and it is a wonder she does so well. She has become quite a hostess, and entertains for tea nearly every afternoon I should be judge. Melitta has been several times, and they get along swimmingly while they bend their heads together and "discuss" Heydt. Marianne wrote her an absolutely charming letter after the Award--I must have been quite wrong in my appraisal, or at least amends are made--and has been to see her, bringing along a copy of Hilda's citation from Bryn Mawr. (Mary Herr was to come yesterday for a more formal presentation of the original). Hilda has had a young beatnik poetess named Denise Levertov in for tea; Miss Schmidt of Grove Press was to come today and so on. But she does not go every day to the Metropolitan, and has not yet been to the Frick. She is happy, very happy, however.

She has an appointment for the 12th with the orthopedic specialist, who will look at the x-ray. Blanche has seen it and is very pessimistic, saying that the head of the hip has almost completely disintegrated (as I warned you it almost certainly would), and that the x-ray man was amazed to hear from Blanche that Hilda suffered no pain. I myself think that some of the discomfort she ascribes to rheumatism probably comes from the hip joint. So there is nothing very much yet to report. Blanche will tell me the right moment to see Prutting whom I said I would contact again only after all tests had been finished. He is doing wonders with her confidence and slipping in every possible kind of test. I do feel pretty sure that I chose the right tactics, and fortunately these fitted in with Hilda's own ideas.

She does not seem to worry very much about finances at the moment. Harold wrote me that he had sent her checks with her names printed on them as of a Pittsburg bank, with an initial deposit of $5,000. "Don't worry about money," he wrote her, "you have plenty a plenty." He is to see her next week.

Hilda does not seem to want to go to Long Island as Pup and John wanted, and she is a little afraid of too much children--although she does seem to enjoy seeing them. Susan has asked her and Blanche up for the weekend beginning the 18th, I to drive down to pick them up at the Stanhope. We will be at the shore as of this Saturday, where everything is on one floor. I rather gathered that she

2

might accept, but we left it "pending" for a bit, with a "loophole." I would
not be so optimistic if it were not for the fact that she said she wanted Blanche
to see the shore and inland for a drive; and when Kat can feel she is doing it for
some one other than herself, the chances are better that she will do so.

She speaks also of taking a car to see Viola. you really would not know
your girl friend! I am wonderfully happy about her happiness, as I hope (no, I
know) you are. She wants to go back however on the 26th, and depending on the
doctor's comment I think she should go. But she will be back in the fall,
October perhaps or November. The one problem will be a companion for her, but she
can make the trip on her own now. You can choose your own time to come out, I feel
sure, if anything can tempt you out.

Oh yes, she has been asked by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in washington,
to speak to them or read to them any time, now or next winter, for $300. I was
amazed and delighted when she said she had written to say that she would probably
be back in the fall, and could not tell until then. Holiday magazine wrote and asked
her to do an article on reading poetry aloud; she replied similarly. Marianne
asked her to vote for the same two men--Wallace Fowlie and Morton Zabel--she had
asked me to, and Hilda had replied as I did that she was not a member herself. Marianne
said she would arrange that. Hilda told me she was really quite interested in
Academy and Institute affairs, though she said I would perhaps be surprised at that.

Her idea of heaven is to start at television at 7:30 and see a western, then
a second western, then a myster, then a serious play, then another western. All
this with the t.v. she did not want in her living room. She laughs at herself about
this, and it will wear off. Now she is a child again.

The reception of her book is a little odd, and I have held back a number of
reviews from the middle west, blasting it. So far it has sold only a thousand
copies, far less than your initial sales; but of course you have an established
audience. However, the NYTimes, the Tribune, and Newsweek are enough to satisfy
anyone, and these were all favorable. The Times kept her listed for several weeks
on the top of their list of recommended books.

Enough for that. Next week is hell, with the necessity of my presence at
every day of the four days of alumni seminars as I introduce and chair the series
on art, as well possibly as those on modern China. Monday I have to go to Rutgers
University in New Jersey to speak before the Fullbright professors, that is, the
one who are going abroad next year to profess something or other. I shall have to
drive down from New Haven late Sunday night, after a party we give in town for
an undergraduate group. I can come back late Monday night so as to be here on
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for the seminars; and then will drive to
New York early Monday morning to bring Hilda and Blanche back, I hope.

You are kind to think about the car. I will write about that next time. As
to ivory arrow heads I stopped in on route to Hilda's on Tuesday and bought three
little pieces of them for fifty dollars. I am much happier. These are Berin
Straits Culture and very nice. As for carving in general, and antiquities, the
prices in New York are for the moment exorbitant. Some luscious mediterranean
pieces, but at an alarming cost. Spinks is best now, I think, for almost anything
of the sort--eskimo included; everyone is sending to England to sell, probably because
of the great British boom.

The Bernice Elliott copies came, which I sent to you, or to Rose Odle who then
sent to you. She was a young writer (American) who became a pen pal of D.R.'s and
visited her several times, sending food packages during the war. The best of these
letters are those giving hints to Elliott on how to improve her writing.

3

I can see of now need for you to join the American Authors Society. But
for courtesy's sake why not drop them a note and say that I handle all your American
literary matters, and therefore etc.

Sorry about the new Sillitoe. It has not been as well reviewed here as his
others.

The Nadejine mss have not yet arrived. My guess is that it had better stay
in the files with his other things for the moment, lest it become submerged at Yale.
If several of your collections go, then it becomes a part of the Bryher Collection
and is hence doubly identified. Also better to wait and present with a complete
set of Faith's book and letters. Otherwise he is simply an entry under N.

Poor Alberto. This is catastrophic for him, although I hope he will use his
convalescence to do some writing.

Your cats! Well, I hate cats anyhow. Elsie would be right even in English,
yes throw them in the quarry. Really, Fido. And you my dog.

Was much amused at the clipping from the Times about young English professor
from Yale. Last night at the English Department picnic (required attendance; I
loathe departmental picnics, teas, cocktail parties etc) I asked the young man,
Addison Ward. He has not seen it, an Oxford friend apparently must have put it in
for him. am clipping to send him as entry the first for his european memory
book.

You asked if I had ever tried tranquilizers. Yes, I use them, have used them
since my hospitalization with ulcers. A quarter grain at a time, say every few
days. Yesterday when I was furious, I popped one in my mouth, and in five minutes
when I had to see the provost of the University about a stupidity on his and the
Treasurer's part, I was as calm as an oyster. Result? They gave in quietly. Then
once in a while when I have read up until one-thirty or two, correcting papers (as
regularly in the last few weeks) I ppp one in my mouth. Yes! I do not stay away
still thinking about what I have put down. They are not habit forming. One just
shouldn't take them and drink much at the same time, so you must be careful.

I left all Ruan queries to Holsaert and since he has not phoned or written me
I gather he is content with your answers or instructions. I am behindhand however in
submitting enclosed. It is ot quite what I or they instructed in the way of margins
etc. Alas, however, it is like the map I sketched on the back of an envelope to
give hints and location from him to go by. I daresay it is all right however. If
you feel like squeeling, better cable me. I have had it for a week, damn it!

We will squat and throw darts at each other this fall when you come over--a
duel, with commas at ten paces. I think you will find British style books for
printers, do not support you. Probably the bad influence.

I have not seen final jacket for Ruan. Elen is probably right about standards
for jackets going down when Kurt is not there. But, alas, Kurt is not there. No, I
did not suggest an anthology from L&L. These things really never do go. I'd much
rather have you at Artemis, or Greenland, or best of all another Beowulf.