1990

132 E. 70th St. N.Y.City.

December 8/20

Dear Elsie;

I have just finished reading your book, in fact I read it twice over (being a poor sleeper and having much time to read at night) is one of the few real benefits that have come to me as a result of the war. It is first rate, really first rate--and so satisfying, chiefly, I think because it has no ready made solutions, no positives which fail by the test of one's own experiences. And the style-I want to say ""God bless you for that". No tortured, suffocated, explosive Roman candle English. It is more vivid than what nine tenths of the aggressive young writers can achieve, and more suggestive than all their semi-suppressions. Besides it has a fine spiritual quality, I once read a story of Anatole France of which I have forgotten the name and everything else except the young man's description of his love for his mistress. He does not love her soul and he does not love her body but the soul of her body. If style can be called the body of ones thoughts than I love the soul of your style.

Furthermore you have made me wonderfully satisfied with myself.

I feel now what an immense service I have done literature by abstaining from it. I could never have written anything with real quality, anything that would not have been thin, obvious and palpable.

And now-I will come and dine with us a week from Saturday

April 27/47

Dear Elsie,

You are one of the friends I have left behind me in America
who is most often in my thoughts, I suppose because I was dissapointed
not to have seen you and said a satisfactory good bye. Everything was
so hurried and so uncertain in the last moment, after the weeks of wal-
ting, that I must confess to having felt quite unnerved. In fact I am only
just now beginning to feel stabilized and more like my old self. When
I first got here the whole eight portentous years since the beginning
of the war seemed to have faded out of my consciousness and I began
dating my letters 1939 and feeling as if my father had just died. It was
all rather ludicrous and fairly upsetting, but I am again properly
after
established in time as well as space, and, feeling that I could not possibly
go through with the physical effort of excavation I suddenly got my
second wind and really am thriving on all the excersise and jumping
about. I mount the hill merrily at seven A.M. and return after five P.M.
Of course I do nothing else and carefully hoarding my strength for
the essential effort of the excating which I am doing with a very
intelligent young Turkish assistant. Of course I cannot let him assume
responsibility as I would an American archaeologist and so I must be
on the spot more than I have been accustomed to be for the last ten
years. I regard it all as quite a triumph of will power and physical
stamina (mostly the latter gift of nature), but after the fall of 1947
certainly after the spring of 1948 I am determined not to go into the field
any more. I want and need the more contemplative type of work, or perhaps,
who knows, I just need and want a great deal more leisure.

2

I may fly back in the summer just to see the book which is in press and to get a breath of the lovely piney Keene Valley air. Tarsus become a inferno of dust and heat and I don't expect to hold out much after the end of June.

And now to the important content of this letter. My Fathers estimate, after eight years of complicated litigation, is finally settled and I can carry out my great desire to put at the disposal of those whom I want to share in my great and quite unmerited good fortune, the money left them in my will. For those of my contemporaries who are really my friends it will be of little benefit, in all probability, if they must wait for my demise (I am sure to turn out an octogenarian) so the five thousand which are to be yours are at your disposal from now on. I do hope they may help a little bit with the problem of a house a servant or in whatever way it will do most good. It will give me so much happiness if it can make your life more comfortable. You must now let me know just how and in what sums you want it. I would have sent a check but it occurred to me that less might go in taxes if I sent it in installments. Please accept this with the feeling that it is not so much a gift, but a privilege for me to share to a very small extent with those I love.

Ever devotedly,

July 16/50

Dear Elsie;

Back in Princeton once more and what a contrast to the wild mountain slopes of Keene Valley, its solitude, its marvellous companionable solitude which is so different from loneliness. I enjoyed every moment of my two weeks and came back refreshed and full of energy. I think it was probably the best part of my summer vacation, because it was the response to a feeling of real need. Of course it was only a feeling, but that can have its own intense and imperious quality. I even read some books that I have been wanting to get at for some time; among other things Fergusson's *Idea of a Theatre*, the book he wrote at the Institute. I found it full of meat and the starting point for many new ways of looking at old friends. I also came away with the feeling that, inspite of my almost three score years and ten I would have to learn Italian in order to read Dante in the original.

I am so glad you are finding the peace of mind and body that you need, at Peterborough. Is it Cather? I hope so, for I want to read you on her strange evolution from vital participation to complete withdrawal.

The Sanborn's have decided to go out west and will be coming to me for the last two weeks of August. I hope your plans will bring you near enough so that I can call for you and bring you to my house for a week in early August. I am sure you will love it. Any chance of there giving you a second month at the Colony? That would make it perfect.

I shall have a rather strenuous time for the next ten days, what with a visit from Elizabeth with her two children, to be followed by a visit from a Harvard professor who is to be the author of one of the chapters in Tarsus II and needs considerable coaching to give him an idea of the background; and finally the arrival and induction of the new assistant. And perhaps as the climax, the homecoming of the assistant who lingered so long in Cilicia. But I may flee back to the mountains before that: Love is ever Getty. P.S. Because to read "Cover the Conquest"