4
New York City (1930-1931)

Compared to the previous two years, 1930 was calm and Barbara’s emotional state continued to improve. For the first two months of the year she and her mother lived in Los Angeles working on Magic Portholes. She also corresponded with her two new friends, Alice Russell and Ed Anderson (who lived in Seattle between sailing gigs), and continued to receive love letters from her “dark suitor,” Togasü Riggs.

 

Fugamisi [Tonga]

7th Jan 1930

Dear Loving friend.

[…] When I read your letter its makes my heart beating like an earthquake shocking. Because its on the letter. You going to try to come back to the Island again some time. […] I want you to married with me. But I want you to let me know about this things that I point to, and I want you to be sure to me my dear girl. […] And I let you know that time to be married with you. Let your families knows it. Let them know that I am goin to Marrie you. […]

About your Hairs. I always kept your hairs in my P. Book. But I dont what Am I sent to you for treasure like your hairs that you gave to me. I wont for get that till the end of the World. […]

 

With best wishes to you & relations.

B. T. Riggs

 

The next letter was to Alice. Barbara’s grand pirate ballad was 1927’s Poppy Island: A Ballad of Pirates, Treasure, Poppies, and Ghosts, which didn’t appear in print until 1966, in Barbara: The Unconscious Autobiography of a Child Genius.

J. B. Priestley said of George Meredith’s 1859 novel: “So far as English fiction is concerned... there can be no doubt that the modern novel began with the publication of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.”

 

Saturday Morning

[ca. mid January 1930]

Hail, Matey:

I feel that I owe you twenty-one thousand and seventy-nine apologies and alopogies and agopolies and other things. I am humiliated, and disgusted with myself, and I’m darnation sorry. But you forgive me, I trust, and hope. Don’t you?

Things really are all right—momentary disturbances and subterranean mutterings, that’s all. Being on a pinnacle of happiness and exaltation—I mean, of course—exultation—I find that I am likewise on a pinnacle of sensitiveness, and a tiny spark fired off a whole train of things that started cavorting round inside till I lost my course and my compasses and got momentarily reversed. But they got back all right, in short time.

Your account of the earthquakes was most exciting. We had a few little quivers down here, but nothing like that. I don’t like the darn things, I have to say. After all, the earth is all we’ve got, and when it begins to play tricks one feels terribly insecure and feeble and useless, somehow—not at all pleasant.

If you’ve got an idea for a yarn—stick to it. Don’t let these other cooks join in the making of the broth. Wave them away as though they were flies. Be polite but uninfluenced! I wish you luck, and more luck; and I’ve a good deal of faith in you, what’s more.

Helen had a ghastly day yesterday—went to the Progressive Educational meeting and came back like an over-used dishrag—and you know what they are! She got slam-banged and squelched and hurt and depressed, and it was very frightful. Unfortunately, it happened to be the day when I wasn’t feeling up to standard either; so we were quite comically blue for half a day or so—she tearful; I grim, glum, and silent.

But we’ve been writing! I’ve been writing a lot. Nothing extraordinary, but enough to make one feel glimmerings of self-respect. I’ve done lots of steamer-stuff, and island-stuff, with light and breezy conversations in it—just what our MS has been needing, you know!

There’s been six inches of snow in Seattle, and bitter cold; and this has prevented Anderson’s job from going through—yet. And, because he also is a sensitive individual, such a little spark fired off a long train just as it did with me. He’s all balled up, about himself, which is the worst kind of balling-up anyone can have, as you know. However, I think that also is decidedly on the improve, and I’m trusting so.

Helen has been considering jobs in China and Alabama. Both sound intriguing, except that China is such a darned mess right now. I shall be sixteen in a little more than a month. I’ve had thoughts, at times, that instead of going back east I’ll settle down grimly and take the first job I can get, no matter what it is. But Helen is insistent on finishing the book first, and perhaps she’s right, now that she’s got so far with it. If we could only serialize it! If only I could pay off Harper’s! If only I could write!

Do any of your young folk’s juvenile healthy-minded periodicals ever take long poems, or ballads? I wrote a grand pirate ballad a couple of years ago, which I was in love with then, and am in love with still. Vanity Fair once offered to take it, if I would cut it down in length, which my father wouldn’t let me do. It amounted originally to forty-two four-line stanzas. This made about three and a half pages. I can cut it down to twenty-seven stanzas, making a little less than two and a half pages. And it’s a grand story, and quite a breezy piece of verse, I think. I like it, perhaps because I never did anything else of its sort, and perhaps because it has got so much adventure and mystery and colour in it. Well, enough—I’ll send it to you. I’ll send you the poem as it is cut down. The stanzas which I took out were purely descriptive—of the island, of the treasure, and so on.

Meanwhile, my dear, one last word of advice from a sage and experienced character: don’t let those children of yours up there interfere with your writing. Let them do the dishes for a change!

 

Yours ever,

Barbara

 

P. S. I’m at present being intellectually tumbled and lifted and slam-banged by reading one of the greatest books ever written: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. I’m insane over it; I think it is magnificent, but crashing and smashing. It has the same effect on my mind that the sea has on my heart—if you know what I mean.

 

I think “That Person” was Andrew Burt, but I don’t know about “the ban upon a Certain Region of the World.” Did he forbid her to come to Montreal?

The Awakening of Helena Ritchie was a 1906 novel by Margaret Deland. “Max” is Max Lewis, Elizabeth’s new husband—they married on New Year’s Eve, 1929. As for Barbara’s Idea—I have none. I guess it didn’t work out.

 

[undated, but I think late January 1930]

Sunday Morning

My dear Watchmate:

What is the Postal Department of the U. S. A. coming to? Lord have mercy on us all!

I reicived (Mate Bill’s spelling) your letter day before yesterday— was glad to her form you agen. Your letter from England was most amusing; but then, after all, what can one expect? I suppose it’s entirely reasonable; though, as Anderson would put it, “It is to smile.”

In regard to China—I’ll quote from Anderson. “The news of the unsettled conditions prevailing in China comes as something of a relief, in so far as it affects any immediate emigration of the Folletts. Frightful place, China. I’ve been out there a couple of times, and always felt a bit silly riding in a rickshaw. Takes an Englishman in a top hat to carry the white man’s burden, so called, with any degree of dignity. I suppose I am as observant as the average, but at that I failed to notice much in the European part of Shanghai that differed greatly from any city of equal size anywhere else. What novelty or glamour exists within the native quarter is more than discounted by strange sounds and bewildering smells. The American concession is more American than New York or San Francisco, and so it is with the British concession.”

Anderson is distinctly a satirist. He says that he “can’t understand why it should be continually necessary for lawyers to write ‘final letters’ to Follett.” When I reminded A. of Helen’s belief that A. considered her exceptionally sane, he replied that “the memory of it eludes me.” A. is really about the only entertainment I have, you see: you have no idea how one must suppress and curb one’s Self when living with Helen!

By the way, I have news of That Person who had put a ban upon a Certain Region of the World. The ban is now lifted—hurray! This is not direct news, but indirect—through Helen. Will wonders never cease? Things always happen in the most unexpected manner, don’t they? Well, it does not worry me. But I’m glad that we’ve finished that part of our writing which was saturated with ghostly atmosphere—I have a feeling the ghost may sleep in peace now.

I’ve read “Helena Richie” and am struck with Helena’s resemblance, in more than one respect, to our own Helen here. I think it’s a fine book—not a tremendous book; but then, one doesn’t want all books to be tremendous, for it would make a dishrag out of one very soon.

Max’s praise is overpowering—I can’t think what evoked it. Maybe it’s a touch of Max’s typical sarcasm and cynicism. . . . By the way, I’ve come, incidentally, to some conclusions. . . .

What really and truly pleased me, was your praise of my little pome. I think your suggestion of the St. Nicholas was a good one—we’ll try it. I’ve hidden it from thee because, my dear, I haven’t had a copy of it till recently, and had nearly forgotten it—just had a smouldering recollection in the anterior of my cere—whatever-it-is. Shipmate, do you think I could find any market for an exciting and colorful and mysterious pirate yarn which I may write shortly? I adore pirates, and can “do” them up to the limit. I propose treasure buried in caves on floating islands, and whatnot.

Friday we drove down to Wilmington with — — — the Palmerstons, who have been very, very good to us. We saw a disgusting vessel which was a cross between a schooner and a motorship, boasting four masts and eight Diesel engines. She brought in eight hundred tons of raw copra, and we watched the copra mill for some time, and were escorted through it by an elderly gentleman whose name is McDevitt, and who writes a letter without using a single punctuation mark, and who spells does “dose.” But he showed us the whole works, and was very kind. And I yarned to a Danish skipper, and a lone lorn engineer who hadn’t talked to anyone for ages and ages, and was so glad to unloosen his tongue that he bored us all to extinction.

I’ve had an idea—I’d better say An Idea—and I wish I had a red ribbon to write it in—large red capitals. If it works, and I haven’t yet found any nigger in the woodpile, it should improve the Folletts’ finances considerably and pleasantly. I shall find out all about it next week; and it may be a definite reason for our coming back to California in the future.

No yob has turned up—I don’t think we particularly desire one, too much. By “we” I mean not particularly Me, but Others. Dinna be askin’ me, mon; I’m tellin’ ye plain, I dinna ken.

More power to the Story!

Tell me, shipmate mine, am I being pickled in brine and preserved?

 

Yours for better days,

B. F.

 

Oh, G-D this — — — — — writing! xx! x! It’s doubtless “good” for me—but it’s fiendish, devilish, hellish Hell; it tends to give me yellow fever to the nth degree; and I’d as soon drink ten qts. of cod liver oil. And I cannot even express my feelings on the subject—except to thee, my dear. And the pressure gauge reads “Danger.”

However, don’t be worried! At that, I’m happier than any mere human has any right to be: and I don’t need no bluebirds, neither!

 

S.M.S. Fugamisi

1st February 1930.

Dear Loving friend

[…] Soon as your letter reach to my little office and I am very supprise to read it. The first thing I am looking for to have look at the end of the letter to know where the letter came from. And when I saw the name and I stopped read, and I looked down to your name, and I leened down my head and cry because I am very pleased to hear of some good news from you my dear loving friend.

But one thing I want let you know my dear. Please can you send me one of your real Photo and you write your name on. I also write my Poor name after. […] I never finish with you till the end of this poor world.

I wished you had a good Luck then. But myself I am always think about you dear. I won’t forget that on the steamer. Also I am still kept your Golden hair I alway put in my pocket when I travel about. I never go to any other country because I want to meet you here again, can you try to come back here some other time […]

 

I remain your trully friend

I, B. Togasu Riggs

Heap of kisses {xxxxxx} xxxxxx }

xxxxxx xxxxxx

 

I don’t believe Alice’s White Doom was published. Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger came out in 1916, posthumously.

 

[undated, but I think early February 1930]

Saturday Morning

Dear A. D. R.:

Yesterday afternoon came your long, imposing-looking manuscript-envelope, forward out from South Pasadena. And now I’ll tell you exactly how White Doom affected me. When I read it the first time, I realized that you had put your finger right on the secret of my feelings about the desert. I feel just like that about the desert! Whether or not that’s an indication that it “comes off” I leave you to decide. I think it does. It’s so brutally inevitable and terrible—it simply freezes the marrow in one’s bones. That’s what it should do. That’s what the desert does. Yes, I’m sure it comes off. I’ve read it three times, and like it better every time. It grows on you. But I don’t hate it, except that I hate the desert in the same way that your story does; and I do see why you wrote it, though that’s lots harder to explain.

What’s more, I don’t think there’s another thing to be done to it, and Helen doesn’t either. It seems to me to be in grand shape; all the details seem just right to us. I’d leave it as it is. I don’t know anything about how or where it could best be sold. It doesn’t seem Pictorial Reviewish, somehow. In fact, one doesn’t often read a magazine with a grim and terrible story in it. Or if they are grim and terrible, they always turn out well in the end—the wrecked sailors rescued, or the suffering fireman rewarded with an admiralty badge, or something. In fact, you don’t see marrow-freezing stories! So it seems a problem to me; but that’s a minor problem, anyhow, and doesn’t matter nearly so much—except as regards finances, of course!

I do want to see you, very frightfully much, if you know what I mean, Pooh. We’d rather like to push our feeble and abortive attempts beneath your nose—though since reading your story I rather quake in the knees about doing so. What we are doing is so unspeakably puny. I’ve just read The Mysterious Stranger, by the way; and I’ve brought the book down here to read it to Helen—whenever I think of anything trivial and puny I always think of that book—what a glorious work of unfettered imagination it is!

A. D. R., if our feeble and abortive attempts aforementioned ever come to anything, may we dedicate them to you? We’d like to so much!

I didn’t mean that you were pickling me in brine—I just meant, was I being pickled? And I can’t remember any of the other mysterious allusions I may have mentioned in that letter. That’s how correspondence is! I swear they’ve gone clean out of my mind. But I don’t mind your hunting them to their lairs, if you’ve a mind to do that.

I can’t give any tid-bits from Anderson this time, because I’ve not been supplied with any since I last wrote to you. BUT! I received a four-page document from my Tongan friend in Vavau, in which the amiable lad proposed marriage to me in the true native fashion, and winded up saying that his heart was “beating like an earthquake.” Isn’t that exciting? Rather a problem, though, to know just what to do about it. Shall I go and keep house in a grass hut in the Tonga Islands? I can’t imagine myself doing it, somehow, even though Fugamisi may be the son of a very high-ranking native chieftain! (I wouldn’t mention this to anyone—it may be humorous, but it should be a secret, for all that.)

Did I tell you that the ban is lifted in Jamaica? Let’s go down there and hide and remain in obscurity together forever! I think you and I’d get on first-rate. Our many and various families can get on without us, for a change. The ban seems to have settled, however, upon the Tonga Islands. I wouldn’t dare to go down there! Not that I want to see the Tongas again, anyway. They haven’t the lure for me that they have for Helen. I think the West Indies are much more beautiful.

Oh, I do want to see you! As soon as you come down, mind! Telephone us, or something. Our number is WAshington 2819. There’s so much to talk about, and explain, and understand, and so on.

Well, as a closing word, I repeat: Don’t do anything more to that story of yours, because it’s perfect as it is, and needs no more work at all.

Your shipmate ever,

Barbara.

 

3518 West 3rd Street is in Los Angeles’s present-day Koreatown, not far from MacArthur Park.

 

[“Feb 1930” according to Helen’s note]

Tuesday Night

Dear A.D.R.

Forgive! I make no excuse—I am obviously indulging in a selfish and bad spell of utter laziness—too lazy even for Farksoo!!!

We were put out of our apartment on account of a newly-wed pair of permanent tenants: now we’re in a confused and tiny place belonging to the same establishment—3518 W. 3rd—just roun’ de co’ner.

Honestly, A.D., I’m no good! Haven’t the gumption of a weevil in a biscuit—and don’t particularly want to have, either.

I can’t say right now anything definite about the Marsodak. Even the S.S. Co. don’t know any too much consairning her. But there’ll be tons of time to write to Panama.

Anderson is still at sea in the yacht. Bless his heart—he sent me a telegram when they sailed so suddenly that he didn’t have time to write. Weather reports say “gentle southerly wind”—this of course is all wrong for him—sails, ye ken.

Ye’d better be disillusioned about me right away, A.D. Really, I’m not worth the respect of a mosquito. But I’m happy as I can be!

 

Bar.

 

[undated, but I think late February 1930]

3518 W. 3rd St. Tuesday Night

Dear A. D. R.:

Helen received your letter yesterday; and she said that she thought at the time it was too late to answer it, as you were coming down this week, and as mail is so absolutely, hideously— — —well “What is the Postal Department coming to?” says Anderson. A sentiment with which we all agree.

Anyhow, she telephoned Gladys, who also agreed; and then tonight we both changed our minds, and so I’m tapping this off in a hurry. Oh, my dear, forgive me that last nasty little note of mine, won’t you? I want to talk to you face to face, instead of writing.

Cause: the cargo-boat is late. Effect: We shall probably not sail until Saturday, possibly Sunday. Remarks: If we sail Sunday Gladys can’t take us! Query: What then? Item: Such is life.

Helen is very much interested in a Pathé Studio dramatist, which may—I repeat, MAY—mean a reason for our coming back here sometime in two incarnations from now. (I hope you don’t believe in reincarnation?) We’ve had lots of excitement and confusion, and don’t quite know where we are. Right now we’re in that stage between twilight and night—or, rather, twilight and dawn—where we don’t know whether we’re in California or Arabia, and where we both desire above all things to go to bed—and can’t see any farther ahead than to that particular consummation-devoutly-to-be-wished.

This Tuesday has been not a day but A DAY. One of the grandest, and one of the most awful imaginable things took place this afternoon right on each others’ heels, leaving us feeling in somewhat of a “Mid-air status quo,” as Anderson puts it very effectively. (He, by the way, has been having Adventures, too; and now has got two jobs instead of none at all!) He won’t be down here, though.

I did such an awful thing this afternoon that “poor sap” would be far too mild a term for me. “Damn fool” would be better, but it is too common. So I’ll call myself a “jobildunked blastoderm”— which, if violently pronounced, is at least interesting-sounding. I—I repeat—I—left open the door of the apartment of our friend the-lady-who-believes-in-reincarnation, and her priceless yellow Persian cat escaped and can’t be found, and the lwbir (see above) is absolutely heart-broken, and I feel like a worm—you know that feeling, I guess.

As for your story being sent back, I think that’s too awful for words; and my heart goes out to you with a feeling of real impulsiveness—you know what I mean. It’s too damn awful, that’s what. And why, why, WHY? Well, as I’ve said before, such is life.

How’s this for a headline: LITTLE CUT-UP MAN CARVES WIFE. !!?!!??!

 

Yours while the earth doth turn, Bar.

 

Gordon Campbell included a few photographs with his letter, including two of the Carnegie in the Arctic and one of Captain Ault holding a sextant.

 

At Sea.

March 2nd 1930.

Dear Miss Barbara.

[…] Well I suppose you heard the bad news about the “Carnegie” being burnt up and the Captain getting killed. I was wondering if you could give me any information about it as I was at Sea at the time just happened to pick up an old newspaper and saw where Captain Ault was brought back to Washington.

I did not hear if any of the others were hurt or not, and I thought may-be you would be able to tell me as I suppose Doctor Paul hase given you all the news by the way give my best regards to the doctor next time you see him and also my best regards to your Mother.

[…] I am at present about 200 miles NE of Cape Hatterass bound from New Orleans to London so I will post this as soon as I arrive in port so I will be dissappointed if I have no mail on arrival in New Orleans.

[…] Don’t forget Barbara give me all the news of Tahiti and write

soon as you know you never answered my last letter. But I forgive a shipmate a little thing like that. […]

 

Your Shipmate

Mr. Gordon Campbell

 

Barbara’s sixteenth birthday was momentous. With the Russells’ help she cut her long hair into a bob, and she and her mother began their voyage back east on the Marsodak.

 

S. S. Marsodak

March 4 [1930]

Dear A. D. R., et al:

Just before I opened that package of yours, I felt it all over, and I studied its weight with great care; and it seemed vaguely to me that I had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before. And the longer I felt it and looked at it, the more this conviction grew, until at last I gave a sudden whoop, and said: “Aha! I know now what it is.” And when I opened it I was right. Well, it’s a grand thing to possess—especially seeing that it is such a very historic copy. I like books with histories—or anything with histories, for that matter.

Now to the story which was so ardently requested; for lack of an ability to draw, I shall perform my bestest endeavor to portray with accuracy the—well, the Results. I stood on the corner of Sixth and Main, as agreed, and about ten minutes later the roadster pulled up, loaded down to the plimsoll mark and a little over. Helen glanced at me as I stepped bravely out, and suddenly said excitedly: “What have you done with your hair?” She told me that she had thought I had “put it up differently, or something.” And then, when she saw the true state of things, she emitted a sound of combined emotions; and for a few minutes there you’d have thought it was the most tremendous thing that had ever happened in the history of the earth, and infinitely vaster and more important and vital in effect upon the whole of humanity than anything that ever took place in the annals of the universe.

Barbara with hair long and bobbed

 

The rest of the day, at intervals, she kept saying how different I looked, and how queer; and I don’t think she really liked it very much, though of course she couldn’t help seeing the practical usefulness of the thing—oh, how practical and useful it is!—and then it faded gradually into oblivion, where I hope it may remain. But it was one of the best afternoon’s works I have ever accomplished—or perhaps ever shall; and I thank the Russells for the inspiration to my failing courage, and their spiritual splicing of my main brace!

The S. S. Marsodak is all my heart could have desired, and more. She’s the most informal, happy-go-lucky, undisciplined ship afloat. There isn’t a white uniform aboard; everyone mixes with everyone else—the captain works like the rest—one of the junior engineers is likely to come in to the captain’s room and slap him staggeringly on the back—they’re all intimate, informal, and unrestrained. It’s simply glorious! There are six passengers; four of them men, so that Helen and I are the only feminine things around except the ship herself and, of course, the wives of the seagulls and flying-fish. That’s lucky, too—the usual first-class type would not enjoy the Marsodak to the full—I feel convinced of that.

 

Alice Russell and Barbara on her sixteenth birthday

 

The captain’s a fine soul, just about the most human skipper we’ve met, I think. The deck department is an amusing assortment; for the first and third mates are gigantic men, enormously stout and pompous; and the second mate, who sits between them at the table, is a man smaller than I, though sturdy and well-built; so that it’s quite ludicrous, and everyone laughs over it, and nobody minds in the least. The engine department is a bunch of grand, taciturn characters; and there never existed a more likely-looking set of A. B.s than the sailors—men of Anderson’s stamp inwardly. The gulf which yawns between him and them is nothing but the gulf of the education he has given himself; which most of them haven’t. But you can see the terrific close affinity—as, indeed, you can among all seafarers.

We’re carrying a deckload of lumber for Norfolk, and a hold-full of copper for Baltimore. So she’s well loaded, and steady as a ferry. The sea has been millpondish since the very beginning, and getting hot now as we go southward. I sit out in the bow, or on the upper deck, and read The Rescue [Joseph Conrad, 1920], which is one of Those Books that simply go through a person, if you know what I mean.

Well, that’s about all, I guess—pleasant, lazy life for me! I shudder to think that it must ever end. Farewell for the nonce; I can’t give you any address now except the New Haven one; but I will write to you at Baltimore. We may stay there some time. . . . I had some vague idea when I started this that I might be able to say something appropriate to you. But I find I can’t, you know; so I’ll have to pass on the unspoken thought instead. Believe me, it’s just as much in existence for not being put down on paper!

 

Yours for happy days,

Barbara.

The apartment in Washington was between the White House and the Lincoln Memorial—an easy walk to the cherry blossoms circling the Tidal Basin.

“The Source” was Barbara’s father. He and my grandmother reviewed scripts for MGM while living in the Pickwick building on South Grand Avenue—or at least that’s where they were in April 1930, when the census was taken.

 

Potomac Park Apts.

21st and C Streets, N. W.

Washington, D. C.

April 7 [1930]

Brave Matey:

I received your letter just where I should have—at that quaint, friendly, slow-moving town of Savannah, where we stayed six or seven hours. When one goes to sea, one thanks the lord almighty that one is out of the range of telephone calls, jazz orchestras, agents, and gas bills, “and the benefits of civilization generally”—but let me tell you, it is an extremely pleasant sensation to see the customs official or the ship’s agent come up the gangway with a hearty smile and a packet of mail, and on the very top of that packet a letter addressed to oneself in a well-known and well-beloved handwriting.

The Marsodak, to me, made up for just about everything. I am sure she made up for the extreme discomfort of landing on the east coast. When we arrived in Baltimore, where there was no one, and no mail, and no money, and no telegram, Helen and I had a mild attack of hysterics, and were quite light-headed together for awhile. And Helen said: “Shall we wear these stockings, or had we better not?” And I replied: “That is the question.” You have no idea how heart-rendingly pathetic and funny and ridiculous it all was.

Washington is a very beautiful city. I remember it as such, and I am not disappointed. The cherry-blossoms are out around the Tidal Basin. But there is always a “but” to these things. And in this case the “but” is a financial one—and that is a very important variety, as you will admit. You see, we have not received as yet any of those phonetically aesthetic phenomena known as “large checks”—and the absence of those seraphic esculents does not add to the scene. When one considers, too, that everything is eggsackly twice as expensive in this diminished West Longitude from Greenwich, why then—well, one yearns, for more reasons than one, to be again in the increased West Longitude from Greenwich, and to be there At Once.

Do you know anything about what has gone wrong with the alleged and assumed source from which the large checks au mirage were alleged and assumed sometime in the future to flow? If so, I confess to a mild sort of human curiosity on the subject. Also: do not reveal to the alleged Source the exact whereabouts of Us. Helen wishes this to be a secret for awhile. If the Source wishes to communicate, he (or It) may do so via thee, my shipmate.

The news of E.’s being in the hospital for appendicitis was a terrific shock. Give her my love, and a hunk of salt horse to munch, which is the sailor’s remedy for all ills of mind or body, and a good one! I hope business is improving in the desert, and that there will soon be some Vast Sums (oh, mellifluent sound!) rolling in the general direction of the Russells. And of us, I may add!

The General Course of Action of the Follett Clan (perhaps “Clan-Follett” would be better) is to remain here for more or less a month, and work like the devil—like two of ’em, rather. Helen is doing some corking writing, and I edit, copy, re-copy, and suggest; and together we are making very palatable corned beef hash. Your wish for “excitement and happiness” has not been listened to by the celestials—but that’s all right. I had a grand taste of it in the Marsodak. I learned how to navigate—picked it up like lightning amid the praises and good wishes of the entire deck crew. And I watched dolphins leap after flying-fish, and porpoises playing under the forefeet, and tropical sunrises and sunsets, and the spray flying clear over the bridge on that day when we had a stiff breeze and lost the bottles on the table. And I made one or two friends of the sort that the sea gives you at its best—those that share your sense of humor, and your general tastes, and your sensitiveness, and your introspectiveness, and would give you the shirts off their backs gladly, and know the same of you, and will be your friends forever and ever.

I want some more news of the Russells—how Pheobe is, and how E. is, and how The Great Exception is getting on, financially and otherwise; also if there is anything to say about the Source and Co., I should be much interested. I may write to It when I have time. Now I am going down town on some Urgent Errands, and so I must say farewell for the nonce.

 

Yours ever,

Barbara.

 

P. S. I do like the type—it’s quaint and different and artistic, I think.

P. P. S. Have you heard anything about who won the contest? B.

P. P. P. S. What does your last headline-contribution mean? I can’t make head nor tail o’t: “Suds slap stars silly.” Can an explanation be offered? B.

 

“Dr. P.” is John Harland “Harley” Paul. His book, The Last Cruise of the Carnegie, was published by Williams and Wilkins Co. in 1932. Barbara edited the manuscript at 15 cents per page.

 

Washington, D. C.

April 28 [1930]

Dear A. D. R.:

Still here, and working like fiends. The writing becomes more magnificent every second; it really is grand, and it really must “go,” I think. There is no longer the faintest trace of a “narrative style” about it; the whole thing has split itself into little episodes, each one a complete little entity, with a definite climax and a definite “point.” Some of them are screamingly funny, others quite sad and wistful. These episodes are split from each other by little section-marks consisting of a triangle of dots. There isn’t even any attempt at strict chronological truth any more. The imagination has come into its own.

These episodes are not even uniform in length—they are just as long or as short as they want to be. Some are eight or nine pages, others half a page. The whole book, every line in it, is entertaining and thoroughly charming, I think. There’s not the repetition of an idea; and even the sea-stuff is varied to an extreme. The characters are uproarious, picturesque, consistent. Negro characters, nautical characters, scientific characters, and ourselves—anyone who knows us would find our self-portraits just true enough to be very humorous.

But it is heart’s blood, believe me! I wish I could draw an accurate graph of Helen writing an episode. On one side of such a graph would be the progress of the episode; on the side at right angles to it would be Helen’s corresponding state of temper, in which high would mean very bad. Thus, the beginning of the episode would be very high, where she realizes that it’s got to be written. The temper remains about the same while she flounders around—then she gets an idea, and the temper drops abruptly to a very happy frame of mind, near the bottom of the scale; there it remains a short time— then difficulties galore are encountered, and the temper line shoots to the very peak of the scale, and the apartment is an accurate representation of the nether regions, for a while, varying in length from half an hour to two days; then the difficulties are worked out; and with another abrupt drop the temper-line returns to a frame of mind in which the universe seems to be her special oyster, and a very nice one.

To be entirely fair, I own that my own temper-line would have to be marked in such a graph, along with hers; and I think the curves would be more or less similar, though not quite so exaggerated... Well, maybe I’ll work this out sometime. If I do I’ll send you a copy!

The other job seems a bit indefinite; though I’ve already hauled in a good deal of pocket-money from Dr. P. Helen now tells me that I’m absolutely indispensable to her, and must go north with her, and help clear out the house, and so on. But if I see the prospects of landing a job here, nothing shall daunt me!

The job performed by the Russells in Pasadena, on Saturday afternoon, was a noble job. The hair started curling up tight as soon as it was set free; it doesn’t bear the faintest resemblance to what it was then. It has a wave in it that hardly anyone will believe is natural! And it is really the best thing that ever happened. While I’m on that subject, I believe I will quote from Anderson’s latest. I wrote to him from Baltimore, sitting at the saloon table of my beloved Marsodak, asking what would happen to me if I should cut my hair off (tactfully not saying that it had been done, you see!) And here is what I got back:

“It seems that I am called upon to remark upon two matters of some importance, if one can consider the matter of a haircut of any importance. As you are probably bobbed, and even possibly shingled by this time, there’s nothing to do but yield with good grace, and submit a word of commendation upon good sense, and convenience, in place of an approving glance. Bobbed hair is really charming, you know, when it doesn’t hang straight down like rope-yarn from an Irish pennant. As you assure me that yours is wavy and inclined to curl, we may count the tresses well lost.”

In the next breath he springs the Arctic adventure, the absolute out-of-touchness with the world for four months, and the element of risk and danger—all quite unconcernedly, and in the same somewhat humorous and heavy literary style. He then professed great concern for my personal welfare. At that time there had been quite a tempest, financially and otherwise, and I sort of expected I should have to walk the streets any minute for any kind of labor I could find. During this crisis, I wrote to Anderson. And he came back with putting his worldly fortune at my disposal, at any time, and with expressing great grief and concern over it.

“I only pray,” he says, “it doesn’t cast you into the day-laboring class. I’ve been in it long enough to know what it amounts to, and what its probable end is. The sort of existence that leaves a woman a slattern at forty, and a man a dolt. Or if they have some perception, leaves them with a sort of misanthropic cynicism, bereft of ideals and appreciation of life.... This must all seem very serious and dull, coming from me.”

Maybe I’m prejudiced somehow, but I think knowing a person like that is a great adventure.

I could also quote ad infinitum from the letter which arrived just before the last one, in which he remarks that there is one thing I have in common with my father—“the tendency, or ability, to dream.” Then he said that my dreams were “beautiful and sane,” instead of being “distorted, perhaps through long suppression, who knows?” Then he became somewhat grandfatherly, saying that dreams would have to be put on the shelf for the present, under these entirely practical conditions. Then he charitably said: “Sure! Don’t I know? Haven’t I sat on deck in the moonlight, and let fancy put on its seven league boots, and go roaming?”

Well, enough of this! This takes me too far away from the immediate present, which I’ve got to set my mind on pretty hard. I keep busy now from getting-up to going-to-bed, and time whizzes. I am happy, on the whole. Not ecstatically so, one couldn’t be; but sort-of at zero, if you know what I mean. Not definitely one thing or another. I am hardly a person right now—I am more like a machine. Typewriting, typewriting, editing, editing, cooking, sweeping, mopping.... That sort of thing. And busy as the devil, every minute, though not about the same things! (I hope.) I want to remain that busy until about next January, when I think I’ll take a vacation of some sort—if not materially, at least mentally and spiritually—come down to Baltimore and look at a ship again, or lock my door (wherever my door will be then!) for a week or so and work on Farksoo and think; or take a train up to New Hampshire and look at the winter woods; or climb Monadnock and sing a song.

Dr. Tyler, who is taking care of Sabra, came down a few days ago, on her way south with some friends; and she dropped in to spend the night. It was very nice to see her, but made us all feel a little queer, if you can imagine it. She talked a lot about Sabra, and made us all very homesick—made me want to send a telegram to Follett and say: “Drop it, you poor fool—and come HOME!” Helen hopes to have money enough this summer to take the cottage in the New Hampshire woods. Then I could have the woods again, and Sabra. I think that is a gorgeous scheme; and I only hope there will be money—though God knows where it is to come from. If we went up there I should still keep busy. More physically than mentally. I should climb hills and swim lakes, and sail my boat, and play around with my little sister (that will be some job, for Tyler says she is a positive “whirlwind.”) I’ll entertain her, and keep her busy, by building her a little shack in the woods, and making a wild-flower garden, and that sort of thing. And I should hope to do some writing, too.

In fact, wherever I am, and whoever I am with, I am going to keep very busy until about next January. And by that time, if I’ve controlled my temper at all the crucial moments, and my tears at all the appalling ones, and my patience at all the nervous ones, and my sense of beauty at all the hideous ones, and a degree of common-sense at all the flurried ones, and prevent myself from becoming hard and bitter during those damn-fiendish ones that tear your vitals—why, then, I think I shall have earned a vacation, by about next January.

The cherry-blossoms are over now. We have seen Mrs. Pratt just once—tomorrow she is coming to take us out to Capitol View, and to drive us about a little. She seems like an extremely nice person; and we all sat and talked about the Russells, and old times, and it was very jolly. She described the Russells’ flurried and hasty departure for California, and the two tea-kettles left over; and it sounded so much like the Folletts that we laughed until the tears ran down our cheeks.

Even if I don’t get a regular and permanent sort of job here, I think we shall stay here about a month longer. We are not needed in New Haven till August, and Helen yearns to get as much as humanly possible of the book finished. She works altogether too hard, of course; but by Jove what writing! We hope to get the book completed, and the final copy made, up to Tahiti, before going home. That should be half of it at least. That will be enough to exhibit the King of England himself. There is a good deal of work about the beginning to do—you see, she improved so vastly that she found the beginning positively rotten by contrast, and worthy of the garbage can; so she has rewritten the whole beginning. And it’s infinitely better than anything you’ve seen of hers. I had no idea she could pull off anything of the kind. It’s full of light-hearted, humorous conversation, beautiful little patches of description, not too much; and—oh, well, there’s just no use talking about it, that’s all! It makes my own stuff sound dull, and heavy, and thick, and formidable, and sluggish, and thoroughly awkward and ridiculous.

Speaking of writing: I hope the pot-boiler and the whole-hearted young man (God! how I yearn to spit at these whole-hearted young men!) sells with a bang; and I don’t doubt it will—that sort always does. But I always think of your writing as being the other kind—the soul-mauling kind.

Well, I can see that I shall have to stop. This won’t go into an ordinary envelope, if I don’t stop soon—I can see that. Anderson wrote me a ten-page letter once, quite a long time ago, and wound up with: “If I write any more, I’ll have to send it by parcel post!”

 

Your shipmate eternally,

Barbara

 

Washington, D. C.

May 26, 1930

Dear old Barnacle [Norman Donaldson]:

Isn’t it satisfactory to have the old mail packet under sail again? Believe it or not, here’s one old sea-dog who is thrilled to the marrow about it!

You are Dead Right, matey—N.H., Conn., is NOT the place for anyone with the name of Follett and the temperament of a navigator instead of an anchorer (always spiritually speaking, you unnerstan’). You are Deader Righter about New York as The Place, and about the Absence of Jobs. They are surely conspicuous by their non-existence.

Howbeitsoeverinasmuchaswhichly, I have Formed a Determination. I am going either to Have a Job or a Definite Prospect for A Job, by June 15th, if it’s in a coal-heap in the W. I.’s. And incidentally, may I use your name as a person who could assure another person that I am neither a vamp nor a pick-pocket, but a reliable and middlingly intelligent coral polyp? Because that might perchance be Useful, if you Perceive my Meaning, Pooh.

Just above my solaplexus and somewhat a-starboard of my ’art, there is a certain silver pin with a certain full-rigged ship on it, presented to me by a certain lady whom you know very well indeed. That pin has been continually in the same Lat. and Long. on its earth, while its earth has wandered the Lats. and Longs. of the Earth, while the Earth has wandered the Lats. and Longs. of the Universe in General. That ship, anyway, chronometers or no chronometers, has been christened Undaunted, and has come safely through many a perilous adventure unscathed. It has been used as a shirt-button, a slip-strap, a Pricking Weapon of Defense (we won’t go into details), a Symbol, a Friend, a Bribe, and a general Shipmate. So you can readily understand that I am attached to it immensely, and you may tell the certain young lady so. By to Hell with this—what I meant to say was that the ship, the Undaunted, represents ME!!!!!

Did you ever hear that grand old negro spiritual: “I got a home in-a dat rock, Don’t you see?” It’s my very most favoritest song, and I’m going to sing it to you someday over our NBR (Canada Dry?).

I told you, did I not?, that I am now working in the employment of one of the observers who was in the Carnegie. This particular observer is a certain medical gentleman, whom you may just possibly have heard of. I am editing, in my most expertest manner, his official narrative of the cruise, and receiving from time to time one of the Succulent Tid-bits known as CHEQUES. Fact is, I receive an almost super-salary. (The word “super” is so much the vogue, don’t you know?) No, there is no more to tell. That’s all. I just told you because I wanted to prove to you what a marvellous person I really am.

Furthermore, I am negotiating two businesses simultaneously, in addition to my Secretarial Labors for both the M.D. and for Helen. These two businesses are both glittering gold, succulent, splendid, unlimited. Neither of them has worked out yet, though.

I have been to Monsieur le Commissioner of Civil Service. However, that’s definitely Out of the Question. I couldn’t make it now if I wanted to, and by God the thundering king and his whole armada of angels, I don’t want to. When I am forty-nine years old, I’ll consider it—if I’m still an old maid, that is. Until then, heaven defend me from the damn thing.

This all sounds like a great deal of busy-ness, doesn’t it?—until one stops to analyze it. Then one finds several things that haven’t worked, and one thing that did. That one thing, ceasing as it does very shortly, because of the departure for unknown regions of the M. D. above-mentioned, may also be considered as non-existent. So what this all boils down to, as one of your marvellous business abilities may easily perceive, is exactly 0—in other words, a great deal of Hot Wind.

Well, well, well! That’s life for you.

Helen’s writing is stunning, glorious, superb. I am a partic’lar person, too, and a good critic. It’s magnificent stuff, and ought to go like a half a gale. To tell the truth, I am a trifle uneasy about Harpers. You see, I had a contract with ’em which I did not keep. In fact, I disgraced myself, probably, in their eyes. There will be no hope for my reputation until Helen’s book lies at their feet. Then there is still no hope for me until they read it, like it, and accept it—and all of those desirable consummations may not consummate, if you know what I’m talking about, at all. In which case, my reputation as a person of any stability is non-existent. I couldn’t even hint about a job with them, unless they get really enthusiastic over this writing. This is all strictly personal.

So really, when one comes right down to the barest of bare facts—and I love bare facts, and I hate these silken individuals who insist on delicately draping them with scarves and banners—to come right down to salt as salt, and north-west as north-west—it all boils down to absolutely 0.

Isn’t that crashingly cheerful?

And I’m absolutely happy, and sing to myself, sometimes aloud, sometimes deep down internally: “I got a home in-a dat rock, Don’t you see?”

I believe I’m getting long-winded. I’ve suspected it for several paragraphs past, but then, what the Hell, etc., can one expect from an old skipper? Especially one who has had an interesting voyage? Would he keep quiet about the winds, and the sails, and the cargo? Not he!

We should leave here the end of this week. I have invented a table, called Discardination of Local Apparent Time, being a table which my excellent friend Mr. Bowditch absolutely forgot to remember— this is a table for keeping track of D-vo, D-vai, MN, MB, and sundry other details. It also is a calendar, condensed, and complicated by many other things, and it’s very Useful. Anyway, as I was saying, we should leave here the end of this week, about Friday, or maybe Saturday, or possibly Sunday. We go to New York, and there we stay to Transact Things. What sort of things—Quien Sabe? God himself hasn’t decided yet. We may come to New Haven after that, we may not, we may drop dead, we may go cuckoo. Quien Sabe again? I suppose we’ll come down. There are Other Things to Transact there, as you can readily imagine. So I suppose that, unless we either die or go cuckoo, I’ll be seeing you again fairly soon—that is, always assuming that you don’t in the interim die or go cuckoo.

With which touch of cynicism, I wish you not Good-day or Goodnight, but Good-sextant.

 

Poop-ishly, Barbara.

 

P. S. In case I forget it, I have a shipmate who is going to write to me next October, care of you, on returning from a voyage to the Arctic in a trading-schooner—a very nautical and square-rigged shipmate, even square-riggeder than you. So next October, in case I forget it, as I said, you are to take care of my mail!

 

Washington, D. C.

May 29. [1930]

Dear A. D. R.:

The MS is nearly FINISHED!!!!! The heart’s blood has all been shed, and nothing is left now to do but to add a few finishing touches. We’ve been here two months now, and our rent expires, so we are going out into one of those delightful little one-horse villages in the Virginia backwoods, to spend a week of sheer rest, walks, and finishing touches, before we sail for New York. We’ve earned it, don’t you think? At least, Helen has.

My job goes out to the back-woods with me. You see, I am now a full-fledged Editor. I edit, and suggest, and copy for that certain medical and scientific gentleman whom you have heard of. This, incidentally, is the typewriter I use for him—I use it myself to keep in practice with it! And that certain gentleman rewards my distinguished efforts at frequent intervals with one of those succulent tidbits known as Wages. In fact, I get paid fifteen whole cents for every single page; and since this type is large, the pages count up mighty fast.

Well, what I mainly wanted to say is already said—about going off into the back-woods. They are going to hold mail here until we get back to Washington, in about a week from now, or perhaps a little more. Then—New York! Helen has a friend there with whom she can stay for nothing, and I am going to stay with my Strange-Marriage Family, which I told you about, in Pelham, twenty minutes from New York. Thus we shall be SEPARATED—which will be good for us both. Furthermore, she can transact her business in N. Y. alone—just as she wants.

Then I’m going after a job. I made a definite determination that by June 15th I was either going to have one or a definite prospect for one. I have a vague feeling that Harper may land me in his Bookshop—especially if he likes the MS. Then there is Percy Waxman, Helen’s friend at Pictorial, and there is always A. A. Knopf. I am one of his authors, and he is almost bound to do something for me if necessary, though that is the last resource—as I despise the place, the chilly, rapid-fire efficient business money-atmosphere of the place. There is also a Jew by name Goldsilver or something of the sort, a friend of a friend of ours, a wealthy and influential person, who might help.

I’ve been into the Civil Service Commission here, but that’s definitely out. If I live to be forty-nine, and am still an old maid, I’ll consider it—not until then! Anyway, I have a fancy that New York will do something, it being so tremendous and—oh, well, there’s no adjective for it. In New York, the first few days, it takes the whole set of a human being’s faculties just to keep his head through the uproar. But one improves with a little time.

Anderson sailed on the 16th, as per schedule, sailed right out into space. Look up Point Barrow on a map of the Arctic regions—that’s the end of the route—then they turn around again and circle Alaska toward home—if they don’t encounter a nor’-easter, or an iceberg, or the pack-ice. Before they sailed he sent off one dashing letter, of quite a different tone from what you’d expect of a person embarking on such a mean voyage. He described his own particular position aboard, half-way between sailor and engineer (there are four gasoline engines for sails and cargo, you see); and then he wrote several pages in mocking echo of the “tourist literature” on Seattle, concerning statistics and what-not. And then he seemed to run out of material, and said “Well, goodbye!” or words to that effect. A person like that sort of takes one’s breath away, seems to me. Very startling and over-powering.

Farksoo progresseth, even with everything else that is on hand. I improve it every time I take out the MS and breathe gently on it. Sometimes I arise at six in the morning and gloat triumphantly over it. I’ve combined the two vocabularys (ies, I mean!) into one, Farksoo and English all mixed. It’s much better that way; and the Grammar develops magnifiquement.

How is The Exception? And the Devil’s Limb? And the Other One? And Thyself? It seems a very long time—almost a kickworthy long time—since I heard from you! Maybe there’ll be a Royal-typed letter awaiting me when I come back from our retreat in the woods.

We have seen the Pratts, and spent a most glorious day at Capitol View with them. I think those woods are too beautiful to be true— oh, how well they satisfy the hunger of one who has spent a year and a half away from New England! Pinkish bronze oaks, gold-green maples in the sunlight, dogwood and red-bud flowering.... And I saw the quarry pool, and the daffodils growing wild on your lawn, Shipmate. And the apples and lilacs were flowering, then, and there were violets and spring beauties everywhere. And Phoebe’s bench is still up there in the branches of the enormous old cherry-tree.

But this won’t do, in this curious old world of ours! Anyway, here’s a whole steamer’s cargo of love to you.

 

Your matey,

Barbara.

 

Barbara was now living with the Bryans in Pelham, about fifteen miles northeast of midtown Manhattan. Near the end of this letter she mentions that she’s planning a new book, which would become Lost Island.

 

16 Young Avenue

Pelham, New York

June 16, 1930

Dear Shipmatey;

You know, I really am a wonderful person. Three different makes of typewriter in three days. This is Mr. Bryan’s Remington Portable—my own is in dry-dock at present, as one might say, if one were nautically inclined.

It is glorious, in more ways than one, to have this really private address. I wish Anderson were here—correspondence would be very enjoyable—no restrictions, as one might say. Well, we’ll make the most of this opportunity, won’t we.

There’s so much to say, my dear, that, to put it very tritely and very truly, “I don’t know where to begin.” About the Farents. I know nothing about them, and I really don’t care a damn now. I only care in so much as I sympathize deeply with the situation confronting you and E. when they came trooping up to the desert. It was—well, it was one of those Grand Accidents that Occur Occasionally. I don’t particularly want to think about them. I tried sincerely to get myself to write, but failed of course. They don’t seem quite of my world at present. I am truly very happy now, and I want to keep to this particular circle, for the time being at least. You see what I mean? And don’t you think I’m right?

The only thing that makes me unhappy now is that my dreams are going through their death-flurries. I thought they were all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my heartstrings twinge. I mean no particular dream, you understand, but the whole radiant flock of them together—with their rainbow wings, iridescent, bright, soaring, glorious, sublime. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money. I am happy the whole live-long day—happy as a bird—but when night comes and I settle down in bed for a night’s sleep, then my tortures begin. I don’t know when I’ve had a night’s sleep without a prelude consisting of an hour or so of writhing! By day I think it’s a grand old adventure; by night I think it’s Hell, and double Hell.

I am seeking a Yob. Yobs are (as the Naturalist said, speaking of the “big game” in the West Indies) few and far between. I have several lines out, and something may bite someday. It must. I can stay here as long as I like, and I have forty-five dollars, earned from Dr. Paul, and he owes me about ten dollars more—that will pay carfare to N. Y. for some time to come. (G. D! how I hate this machine.)

The MS may sell. Harper has rejected it. Helen is in the hands of two female agents, who seem to be very influential people around here. They make lavish promises, and Helen believes; Barbara, the skeptic, says: “A bird in the hand, etc.” Anyway, Collier’s, American, the Companion, and Good Housekeeping, are all interested, and will all have a shot at it—and, as I said, these two ladies seem to be influential. Someone telephoned their office about it while I was there talking, and one of them said: “Oh, but you’ll have to stand in line, you know.” Which delighted Helen beyond measure, naturally.

Oh, I wish, and WISH Mr. R. and Phoebe could go to Russia alone. I think it would be the best thing that could possibly happen, for both of ’em. Meanwhile, you and I will hold down the continent of North America until they come back, in the very distant future— or, perhaps, until you follow them over. In all events, they should go alone for a while, and you and I should be together somewhere, with our cocoa cups.

You and I could have the most excellent laugh about these people right here, for instance. I told you a little about them when I was out there. They have become even worse. They never go out of the house at all. If Mrs. Bryan has to go down to the village on some little errand, Mr. Bryan stands by the window and peers anxiously forth until she returns. At night every bolt and lock and key in the whole house is drawn or turned; the chain bolt on the front door, both locks, the knob on the screen-door, the key on the inner door, and all the windows fastidiously bolted. I never saw such terribly, appallingly fastidious people in all my days. They’re worse than Mrs. Hayball. There are two “objects” in the kitchen, and neither is ever used at all.

The “swamp angels” are fastidiously removed and put outdoors at once. They say that those two objects are merely for use in the winter, when it is too snowy or dripping to go outside. It seems strange, when one considers all this, that Mr. B. doesn’t keep the type of his Remington in better shape.

Mrs. B. never does any house-work at all, except for very superficial “picking-up” and dusting around. Every Saturday she has a man come to clean house. The Two themselves do nothing but sit, first in one chair and then in another. They don’t know what to do or think about—and the result is 0. They listen to the same things every night on the radio, and go to bed in the same way. But it amuses me infinitely. I enjoy it, I have to say. I am more private than I’ve had the privilege of being for a long time. I josh them good-naturedly, and they seem to like it—but they don’t know what to make of me. You can readily imagine what vague, scandalous, unaccountable, phenomenal sort of Thing I am to them!

What are you going to do about the pot-boiler? Take out the fox-meat? It’s somewhat ironical that the market you scorned should have dumped you, isn’t it? That’s what comes of being snotty, even if it’s only mental. Well, good luck to it (damn this ribbon!) I think, as always, that the whole great Thing we call Life is one huge practical joke, anyhow. If we take it as such, it is instantly powerless, and we may with impunity exult. THEN—the old Joke treats us Well for a change, and we begin to forget that it is a Joke—with the result that we are unprepared for the next battering. Then is heard the rumbling, ironical Laughter of the Gods. I think a good, sound, healthy pessimism is a Wise and Noble Thing.

Don’t be so humble and modest. You’re a wonderful safety-valve; and I damn well hate to think that you were nothing but that (Oh, the language which is going on inside me about this ribbon!)—a safety-valve? No, no—you’re about the best friend anyone ever had, or ever imagined. To be a safety-valve is just a small item which is an automatic and natural part of a Friend, don’t you think so? As for Anderson, he has served my needs a whole year now, and a rest will do both of us good, I suppose—though it is a little strange not to be able to anticipate those pencilled, air-mail envelopes! I shall hear from him—barring accidents—about the first week in October. I expect he will show up on this coast shortly afterwards. It would be like him to do so. Besides, I flatter myself a little that perhaps my friendship did something for him, too. I think we were mutually very good for each other—let the Farents say what they may!

Do you realize that a year ago yesterday I set sail from Honolulu harbor in my beloved Vigilant? I was rather glum all yesterday thinking of it. It hurt. I suppose it will be years before I go to sea again, and I may never even see that schooner. I suppose that I spent about the happiest month of my life during that sea-trip in her. And it lasted even during that week in port, when I took over the cabin-boy’s job, and when Helen, Anderson, and I had cherry and ice-cream parties in the cabin after everyone had gone ashore, and when we used to walk up into that virgin forest two miles up the road, and eat salmon-berries. Life was beautiful then. This doesn’t seem like the same era. Here the beauty consists of great stone towers against the sunset—sublime, symbolic, but away above the plane of us poor ants that hustle along the swarming streets at their feet, so engrossed in ourselves that we never even see a fellow-mortal, but bump into him with a bang, and then hurry and hurry on.

Oh, my God, my God!

It makes one’s heart and soul suffer—it stabs them to the quick. Oh, for wings, for wings!

Wings!

That is, in general, the theme not only of my own heart, but of the book I’m going to write. I ought to be able to write it—I live it constantly. My heart is the field of a thousand battles every day.

But I’m happy, really—you understand that, don’t you? And I’m coming up, and up. Not a day passes but that I myself climb a little—somewhere. I am getting gradually to a point where I can trust myself, put faith in myself. Gradually, and cautiously. Once I tried it before I was ready, and the cargo spilled. But I’m Building, always. If I can put unbounded faith in myself, I don’t care what happens. And I can, as time goes on.

 

Your shore-bound mate,

Barbara.

 

P. S. Dr. Paul spends time and postage writing me love-letters! He also sends me now and then a batch of stuff to edit and typewrite. This is Well—it means Cheques! B.

 

New York’s YWCA was at 610 Lexington Avenue, three blocks east of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. (As of this writing it’s a construction site for a 709-foot luxury hotel/condominium complex.)

Founded in 1917 with Rockefeller money, the Lincoln School was an experimental “laboratory school” under the aegis of the Teachers College at Columbia University.

 

16 Young Avenue

Pelham, New York

June 26, 1930

Dear First Officer:

How do you do? How are your dreams today?

Mine somewhat materialized last Monday—that is, the puny, coined, earthly little dream somewhat materialized—when I got a sort of a job. I was in Pelham until Sunday noon, then I suddenly became very tired of sitting like a fisherman at his lines, with nothing biting at any one of them. And I decided I’d have to change and be like a Tahitian fisherman who takes spear in hand and dives after his prey, instead of waiting for it.

No sooner thought than accomplished. The tears of horror stood silverly in my een as I left the house, and increased with nearness to the City, but I turned not back, Skipper, I turned not back. That was Sunday night. I stayed at the Y. W. C. A. (Ugh!) and Monday morning I— — —went to work! Who can boast of such a thing as that?

It happened when I was on the roof garden Sunday night, gazing o’er the colossal brow of the etc., etc., etc., and there was also on the roof garden an old lady. It transpired, after friendly conversation, that she ran an employment agency for domestic service, and that she needed some typewriting done, and could use me for “an hour or two in the morning.” I went, stayed all day, all Tuesday, all Wednesday, and half of today, receiving fourteen dollars and much praise.

The Great Trouble, though, is that I am now “laid off”—oh, the horror of those two words!—for the regular girl, who had been out, comes back next week. So that’s that. Now I’m going back to Pelham to spend the week-end; and that’s always my mail address, for they will forward anything anywhere.

I’ve read all of Barrie’s plays, now, and wish there were hundreds more. But “Dear Brutus” is more gorgeous than the island one, “Mary Rose.”

I haven’t seen a picture of Masefield for a long time, and I don’t know whether you’re right or not. I’ll look it up someday.

Follett did something about the house, I don’t know just what. It belongs to Helen now, debts and all. She’s been in N. H., seen Sabra, slept in the house, had a Hell of a time, and pulled through very well, in spite of a horrible row with Dr. Tyler which was humiliating and irritating to all of us. I shall see Sabra next Monday. Helen is going to bring her to New York to have her see someone at the Lincoln School. We want to get an unfurnished apartment near the school, move down some of our stuff, and Get Settled. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yes, I know it does.

The Farents can g-t- H—, if you know what I mean; I won’t think about them yet awhile. You have my devoted sympathy, however, as you know; and you have it every time you see them—so when you do see them, remember that my sympathy is floating around somewhere in the atmosphere. I’ll lay up a “special fund” of it for that very purpose.

I wish one of you were Here, so that I’d have a real kindred spirit close by. I need one! Correspondence is as inadequate as clouds are to a parched country longing for rain—I mean, when the clouds just drift away overhead and perform nothing! I wish Anderson were around, failing yourself. However, it is doubtless magnificent training for me not to have the people I want and care for, but to be forced to stand on my own pins, mentally and emotionally speaking.

Helen’s MS is in the hands of agents who talk a great deal. Via them it is in the hands of Collier’s. I’d like to report a two-thousand-dollar check—but, alas, am unable to do so at this sitting! Helen’s address is many and various. The best guess, I reckon, is ℅ Dr. Margaret Tyler, 75 Mansfield St., New Haven, Conn. I don’t guarantee it, though. By the way, Helen says she wants you more than she ever has, and she sends you her greatest love. That woman is—well, what she is going through isn’t even printable, and only a deep-sea sailor could even begin to hint at it.

You ask slyly and subtly and cautiously about Dr. Paul. You’ve asked so very cautiously, in fact, that I don’t exactly understand what it is you’re asking about him. You needn’t be so Extremely Reserved with me, you know! I don’t give a puff of wind for Dr. Paul, one way or another, if that’s what you want to know. Helen got banged up, some, but she’s getting over it. Her knowledge of his attentions to me (which are probably lighter than thistle-down, I’m not sure) has waked her up with a whang to what sort of a juggler he really is. So I guess that’s all right, especially as he’s going to Spitsbergen or Lapadaeczvia or somewhere, and can’t be even written to for a year.

The more I see of everybody in general, the more I know that there are a few simple, quiet souls (like Anderson) who unconsciously and entirely unmaliciously knock everyone else into so many bedraggled cocked hats.

 

Yours for aye,

Barbara.

 

A postcard to Anne Meservey from Helen.

 

3 July [1930]

Y. U. L. A.

38th & Lexington Ave.

New York

I’ve torn up 3 letters to you. Just tore up another. So much to ask and tell you about. How is Edward? I do want to know that! And what are your summer plans. I must see you if possible. Write me at 176 Armory St. New Haven. I’ll be living there alone in an empty house from tomorrow on for a week. Then here again job-hunting.

H.

 

Fox Film Corporation became Twentieth Century Fox.

 

16 Young Avenue

Pelham, New York

July 18, 1930

Dear Mate:

CUBS HAMMER MOSS, SCORING ON ROBINS. How’s that, my dear?

Well, ’ere I ham, as one might say. Your letter arrived a rather shocking long time ago (it’s make my heart beating like a earth shocking), and I would be ’shamed if I weren’t so almighty damn-fired hell-bent busy. You see, I am no longer begging for work, I am in work up to my ears, and over them at times. Yes, I have bearded New York in its lair. I find it not so appalling, in fact I rather like it, as one likes some colossal piece of machinery; and struggling into the sardine-packed express “L” at quarter to nine in the morning is almost exhilarating. It thrills me to see all those millions of faces, all going to their respective puny jobs, and all so tense and rushed. I don’t know, but New York has so far done me much more good than harm. I feel more of a sympathy and understanding for People In General than ever in my life before, because I am One Of Them, which I never was in my life before. I find myself buying my chewing-gum from a cripple in the street, rather than in a drug-store.

Yes, I long and long and long for the sea, and woods, and quiet, and more sunshine, and the wind, and a little more room, please, and not so many people on my feet, if you don’t mind. And there are times when I feel my heart beginning to curl up just a little at the edges—the first step, the warning symptom, to its sickening and dwindling. I keep holding out my arms—I mean my spiritual arms—like an amoeba or sumthin. A ceaseless need. Sometimes I think it’s the sea, and sometimes I think it’s Anderson’s correspondence, and sometimes I think it’s just space I need, and the wild. And I can’t have ’em!

You see, I am now taking a course at the Packard Commercial School, and studying shorthand with might and main. Already I have caught up to the class which started two weeks ahead of me, and I’ve only been there five days! You see, a really good and intelligent stenographer and typist can always get some sort of a job, while there’s damn little chance for an inexperienced nothing-in-particular, as I am. I really am having a fine time at the school. The teachers are good souls, both of them, and it is as fine a bunch of young womanhood as I ever set eyes on—those girls.

I am also writing synopses for Fox, at six dollars apiece, which is fun. Then, too, occasionally someone drops a bulky MS into my lap and says: “Here! I’ll give you five dollars for your opinion on this, expressed in two pages.” That’s a tribute to one’s critical sense, ain’t it? Furthermore, it’s pin-money—lunches and stockings and toothpaste and what-not.

About Sabra. Please don’t let your imagination go running away with you, or I’ll die. You know, after all, she is only a little, little girl. It was almost a terrible experience, if you want the real truth. I rushed to her with my heart wide open, and my soul ready for the balm I felt she’d give—and the beautiful dream melted, and I found a little child—a darling little child, to be sure—who took all I could give, and gave almost nothing in return, because she could not, of course, and I was ridiculous to expect it of her, but expect it I did. She could not fill any need of mine—not the need I thought she could fill, that is, but something entirely different that hasn’t got oriented yet; and the other need, the greater one, is still hungry. And it’s dying now. You can’t keep anything hungry forever, without eventually just starving it to its death. There is a limit.

Well, just what will happen I don’t know. I have been in New Haven a good deal, slaving away in the attic of No. 176. It’s fascinating! Sorting out books, and junk—amazing junk! I’ve pretty well worked things out. You know, we’ve rented an apartment in the city, and we’re moving into it the first of August, and we stay there until June, 1931, at least. At that date the building is going to be torn down, so I suppose we may just conceivably have to clear out. And I think it’s lucky. Otherwise we might become appallingly rooted there.

So far my life seems to be nothing better than a mess, so far as the future is concerned. I have to work, that’s certain, and if I get a regular job I’ll have to stay with it, and that means—well, it means just what I’m having now, more or less. I have to heave a sigh at times. Sometimes I even get very morbid and decide that I’ll marry the first person who offers a chance to get out of it. And then sometimes I change my mind. I don’t know. Anderson informs me that dreams have to be put away on the shelf occasionally—usually, he should have said! New York, New York. Two weeks vacation. Slaving for your salt and matches and tooth-paste, and your cup of soup and crumb of hard-tack. I always swore I would never get into the “mood” about it all, but I seem to at times in spite of myself.

But don’t mistake me. When I’m busy—and I am busy—I am really happy, you know. I don’t have much time to sit down and think, and I guess that’s lucky. I haven’t any time but for the ten-of-eight train in the morning, the 3rd Avenue express, the Packard School, lunch, afternoon business, the trains again, supper, Amos ’n’ Andy, work, bed, and the ten-of-eight in the morning again. I meant to go down to New Haven over this week-end, but the prospect of two quiet days in the “timid little house” was too tempting to resist. I meant to go down to Baltimore when the Marsodak came in last trip, but didn’t. I mean to go to N. H. next week, but probably shan’t. I also mean to go to Baltimore next trip, but really I can’t possibly. I also meant to write and do Farksoo, but somehow I keep missing the mark. My nose is shackled to the grindstone! I never can lift my head to get a peek at the blue sky!

And you—you are a grand, gorgeous soul, and I am with you more than you know. And I’m glad you agree with me about the cocked hats.

 

Yours ever,

Barbara.

 

P. S. The house is getting ready to be sold now. Helen and Sabra are living there. I was to stay there too until August 1, but joined the school instead. You can imagine how that flabbergasted Helen, who had counted on my staying down there and helping out. But I figgered that I would be a coward either way, and so I took what I guess was the severest course after all!

Russian looks to me worse than Gregg shorthand, and not nearly so convenient! B.

 

Helen and her daughters lived in the apartment building on West 122nd Street for less than a year. It was on a quiet corner of Manhattan—steps away from the Hudson near Grant’s Tomb and overlooking Sakura Park (so named after a gift of 2,500 cherry trees from the Committee of Japanese Residents of New York in 1912).

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York City

August 1, 1930

My Deah:

Well! Here we am, as you might say. It really has become a rather usual occurrence, all this moving around, yet still, it has not lost a certain spice. This is really a grand little apartment of three rooms, and we have our own old furniture, and a whole bookcase full of books (the pick of the flock) and a little kitchen which is concealed behind two vast doors; and I can’t imagine a better place for us to live in— — —that is, all things considered, and seeing things as they are, my boy, as Chester used to say to Marlow.

You mustn’t feel sorry for me at all, though. I really am quite happy, because I am so busy from morning till night that I haven’t time for anything else. I’m good in school—in fact, one of the best in the shorthand class, now—and Fox Film likes my work for them, and they hand me out a bit of praise almost every time I come into the office, which is about three times a week, and they pay me in cash in sealed pay-envelopes (can you imagine anything more pleasant?) and so I can pay the school and my car-fare and all my odds and ends, and feel quite independent. There’s nothing better than that. Of course I simply detest the work I do for them—it’s enough to give a rhinoceros the ear-ache, let alone me—but the getting paid more than compensates for that.

So I’m in good shape, and find time passing swiftly. Our old, old, old friend Leo Meyette (who used to be the grocery boy in the little one-horse New Hampshire town where we spent the summers, and who is one of the grandest persons in the world) is here, with his wife and his younger brother; and his antics in the great City keep Helen and me laughing. Then, too, it won’t be so very long before Anderson is home, and I believe I could go through anything with an occasional letter from him to keep me going. I never realized before how he and I had gotten to depend on each other’s support. We each have had such ghastly times! It’s quite beautiful, I think—two hungry souls beating their wings desperately and finding such joy and strength in one another.

I really think it is grand for Phoebe to be off—though be sure that I can sympathize with you. It must be like being wrapped in an unlighted cloud, to be alone after having such an iridescent creature with one for so long. I want to see all the Russells together. I’m damned sick of seeing people who are starved for each other separated by circumstances—especially such petty materialistic circumstances—finances, for instance! Bah!

Sabra is a great little thing. She is not with us now. I think that is a mercy for all of us. School begins late in September, and she would be miserable here unless she were busy. She is now at a camp in Lyme, Connecticut, which is run by a grand woman who is an old friend of hers. All the children are about Sabra’s age, and she is a gregarious little thing, so it suits her to a t. Furthermore, this is a rather unusual sort of camp. It is excessively informal and care-free and happy-go-lucky. For one thing, most of the children wear—not a single blessed shred of any kind! Nothing could be better, in that glorious sunshine and fresh country air. They are brown as Polynesians, and just as happy, and so deliciously unconscious of themselves that it is a rare pleasure to watch them playing.

I’ll never forget Sabra’s eyes when she first saw them. We drove up in the camp truck, and they stood around us in a semi-circle, motionless, staring, and naked, just as the South Sea babies run out from a native house to stare at strangers. She was quite taken aback, and amazed. So were we; it was somewhat unexpected! About half of them are little boys—S.’s first experience, you see. But she was entirely acclimated in half an hour or so, and now she is having the time of her life. I think it’s the best thing that could possibly happen, both for her and for us. It will put her, for one thing, in corking physical shape for a winter in New York. She needs all the reserve strength and health that sunshine and the country can give her.

God knows my own health is standing me in good stead. I don’t know where I’d be without it. Those subways at eight-fifteen A. M., when the masses and millions are tearing in to work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Does that give you any idea?

Well, news seems to be consistently lacking here. I give the best of myself to everything I do—no man can do more than that. I work like a dog, sleep like a pig, tear around like a deer, eat like a wolf, laugh like a hyena (sometimes), spit like a cat (other times), shut up like an oyster (for a change), and pull long juicy worms out of the ground, like an early bird. There. Doesn’t that give you a picture? Someone who can draw caricatures (Phoebe, for instance) ought to take the matter up.

 

Your mate, in foul or fair,

Bar.

 

August 15, 1930

Dear Oxford:

You would be surprised at my reason for writing to you, on this thoroughly disgusting dreary rainy afternoon—surprised and probably amused. So first I’ll tell you that. Ever since I can remember— which is a fairly long time—there has been a framed photograph among my very various possessions—the photograph which you once took of a rabbit reaching up to sniff at the blossoms of a strawberry plant which towers above him! That picture has always delighted me, yet I don’t believe I ever spoke about it to you. Now that I’m back from my roamings, and have it on the wall of the dining-room of our very small new home, it delights me ten times more than ever—so much so, in fact, that I simply couldn’t resist the impulse to sit down and write to you about it.

It appeals to everything there is in me—love of animals, sense of humor, sense of wistfulness, love of beauty. It is without doubt one of the most perfect and rare photographs in existence. I should like to hear the history of it. Leo Meyette, who is here now, but leaving for New Hampshire tonight, asked: “Where did he get a rabbit so small?” I told him that I was sure it was a chance meeting-up in the woods. That’s true, is it not? And that strawberry plant—was it an exceptionally large one? For the rabbit is really incredibly small! If it is an ordinary strawberry plant, the photograph must have been enlarged to approximately life-size, I should say. That leaves the rabbit about two and half inches from the soles of his hind feet to the tips of his ears—and he has lifted his forefeet from the ground to stretch himself up, too!

Apart from this I believe there isn’t a great deal to talk about—not via the U. S. Mail at least. That is a most unsatisfactory institution. It is not the fault of itself at all: indeed, one must admire nowadays the celerity and certainty of it, and all that. The difficulty is more fundamental than that. It lies in the expression on paper. That’s a real obstacle. Letters are confounded nuisances, except when they deal with things so remote and impersonal as—well, the weather, or the rabbit-photograph, or what price butter-beans.

I think Leo expressed it rather accurately in one of his letters to Helen. He closed it: “In a devil of a rush and mess and damn this city I hate it.” My sentiments to a t.

 

With love,

Barbara.

 

Many Red Devils Ran from My Heart is from Stephen Crane’s first collection of poems, The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895).

“To mark, wi’ envy in my gaze, the couples kittlin’ in the dark between the funnel-stays” is from M’Andrew’s Hymn by Rudyard Kipling (1893).

Joseph Conrad’s blessing does not appear to have survived, nor Barbara’s photograph of one of her favorite writers.

 

620 West 122nd Street

August 18 [1930]

Splice the main-brace, ahoy!

All congratulations on your latest entries in the unofficial log. It arrived this morning, and so you see I am SETTING YOU AN EXAMPLE. In fact, I wrote you a letter before this one, but tore it up. It contains too much really Tough Language, and all That Sort of Thing! I suppose I picked it up from the Unmentionable Movie Trash which I Read For a Living—anyhow, where-ever I picked it up, it certainly is NOT the proper thing to send in a letter to one who is writing Healthy Young Men for a Living.

My dear, don’t you ever yearn to spit in their faces, and to create for a change some perfectly Horrible and Gritty young men who would hammer and mash and batter and whang up all the healthy-minded maidens? I suppose, were a list of detailed rules for healthy stories written out, they would look something like this: “No kisses of more than two seconds’ duration,” and that sort of thing. Wouldn’t they?

Well, anyhow! Dang it all, I’d like to see all you Russells together. It’s not right for people to have half-continents and such trash shoved whang into their faces, between them and those they love, is it? We are just Victims, that’s all. There are half a dozen or so great Wheels grinding around toward each other all the time, interlocking on the rims, and if we happen to get caught between them———we just get mashed.

 

Many red devils ran from my heart

And out upon the page, They were so tiny

The pen could mash them,

And many struggled in the ink. It was strange

To write in this red muck Of things from my heart.

Stephen Crane

 

Tough going at times, my beloved mate!

I wish I had some GOOD news for you! Alas! I am fairly busy over my eighteen-a-week (more-or-less). I have a fairly regular round of housework, synopsisses, tipe-riting, an’ a’ that. My sole pastime, so far, consists of walking along the river-bank park in the evenings after dark—“to mark, wi’ envy in my gaze, the couples kittlin’ in the dark between the funnel-stays.” (If only there were some funnel-stays! Alas!) Helen’s Manuscript is less and less sold all the time. Sabra is still at camp. Finances become lower and lower. You can’t live—here—on my salary—though I daresay I could alone. And to think that I’m the only one of the family who has a “yob!” That tickles my sense of humor fine!

My sense of humor has had more and more heavy responsibilities of late. I really need fuel for it—fresh fuel from the outside. However, I can say very truthfully that it has never yet failed me, and it isn’t going to either . . . . Leo Meyette (have I told you anything of him?) and his wife, and his brother, and his sister, have all been here for a while, but now they have departed for New Hampshire and the old home-farm again. It was a delight to have them here. Leo, in particular, is really one of the greatest persons in the world, as well as one of the very simplest and humblest.

Have you Seen or Heard anything of the Farents? I confess to a mild sort of curiosity. I suppose I should write to them, but—oh my, oh my! You see, I feel that if I can stick out this particular present-minute, present-place situation, and get on top of it, and yammer at it, and smash it, and domineer over it, and be Snooty and Disagreeable to it, and Awe it, and just make it Cringe—why, then, I guess I’m doing all I have room for. And I am doing just that. So picture yourself an Amazon, mounted upon a Bucking Elephant, and hammering that elephant over the head with a Fijian war-club.

Anyway, there’s a picture of Joseph Conrad over this table ....

And NOTHING can daunt me!

“I got a home in-a dat rock.”

Wings! I have ’em!

And Joseph Conrad sent me his blessing and his love. Not so very long ago.

And Anderson comes home in October.

Well!

Lots of things have Occurred to Me, anyhow. I think I’m ready to live a much happier sort of life from now on—I mean, to make the best of circumstances and of myself, and get a lot of pleasure and fun out of anything and everything. I wish poor Helen could do that as effectively as I have learned to do it. She hasn’t. She’s under water. God! And I can’t rescue her. I do forty-nine fiftieths of everything that is done at No. 122, as it is; and I sing as I do it: “I got a home in-a dat rock, Don’t you see?”

And in October, Anderson comes home. And I’ll have that fresh fuel for my S. of H. Besides, I may earn a whang on the back from him, and that’s worth anything.

But I want all the Russells to be together. And why must Phoebe go to school, with her scientific father to superintend her? I think school is really and primarily a place for children whose parents are banging each other over the head with rolling-pins, or whose parents are absolute morons, and whose parents are both slaving at outside work for a living, or for children reared in utter poverty and misery. (This is not supposed to cast any reflections of any kind upon the Russells, I hope you understand!) But rainbows shouldn’t be stuffed into sofa-cushions, should they?

I love you, A.D.R.

 

Yours ever,

Barbara.

 

620 Etc

August 29 [1930]

Dear Mate:

Having allowed the dentist to put a gold inlay into a tooth, having written, delivered, and been paid for three synopses, having seen Helen off for New Haven again (thereby making three trips back and forth from here to town in the course of the day, via that devastating subway), and having, alone and in peace at last, partaken of my bowl of soup and crust of bread—having done all this, and being still quite alive, I will now proceed (oh, luxury!) to sit down and quietly, and in leisurely fashion, write a letter to you.

How I have chuckled over your contributions from Pasadena headline English! I would answer in kind, but I scan the papers in vain. New York headlinists don’t seem to have that ingenious knack of balling things up; in fact, for the most part they are altogether too lucid to be interesting. DRIVE CAR DEATH LEAP TIES UP TRAFFIC, is the best I can do, for the time being.

Dash it all, now that I’ve really sat down—after three days of trying to—there doesn’t seem to be anything more to say than there was last time or the time before, and one shouldn’t repeat oneself. School begins again next Tuesday. Thank God I can pay for it—the whole thing. I can also pay my own dentist bills, and buy my own clothes, and my own amusements and necessities. That’s more than I was ever able to do before; and I can tell you, it makes me feel quite uppity when I go sailing into that Fox office on Broadway and receive my weekly pay envelope!

Helen is rather desperate. I don’t know what to do about her, at all, at all. It makes her feel rather badly to think that I have a job and she hasn’t; it struck her hard that her MS didn’t sell with a bang; and as for finances—well, I don’t know where the rent comes from. She is always so secretive about those things, and she’s such a fool, really, when it comes to money and Practical Things. When I say “Fool,” I don’t mean it harshly, you understand. I guess you know what I mean as well as I do, anyway.

She has gone down to New Haven now, to mull over the house, and get it ready for renting. She is kind of wild here, because there’s a steam-derrick half a block away going all day, and making a fearsome racket. My typewriter goes too much for her nerves, too; but I don’t see how that can be helped. I’m hoping she’ll find some quiet in New Haven for a few days now, just as I’m finding peace here alone. When she comes again, Sabra will be with her.

Well, what next? I’m fairly contented, and have a rather pleasant sort of curiosity about the future. It can’t fail to be interesting! I think the masculine farent should be whanged on the head and wake up to find himself shanghaied to sea; and I think the feminine farent should tackle the first job she can light on. He isn’t what you’d call a Man. He isn’t half the man that some of the Dago workmen are down the street. He isn’t halfway the man that Mate Bill is, or Cap’n Colbeth, or Anderson. He should go to work and do some hard physical labor, under someone who can’t be talked back to, and who doesn’t care a damn for all the long words. Nothing could be better for him than to take a trip in the Vigilant, under old Captain Peasley, and first mate Jacobsen. Jove! He’d “yump” around then, all right!

Yes! I have some news for you. I went and saw The Green Pastures. It is the loveliest, and most real, and simple, touching, glorious play I ever knew. Marc Connelly’s negro play, you know. It interprets the negro’s simple belief and religion. Lord God Jehovah is exactly like some kindly old white-haired preacher: he has a little office up in Heaven, and every morning two angels, with dust-covers over their wings, come in and dust it. The whole story is there from the beginning—Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Moses, the pilgrims on their way to Canaan; and all through it the choir sings negro spirituals, most of them familiar—and you get to the point before long when you just want to lie down and weep.

Speaking of weeping: the steam-derrick which makes such a racket down the street here is doing a job for a company which calls itself The House-Wrecking Company. If that ain’t the limit!...

 

Yours,

B.

 

I just received a letter from Detroit, enclosing E.’s masterpiece. Oh, I do so hope you’ll all manage to get away together on some gorgeous Exposition before long! B.

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York City

August 30, 1930

Dear Mr. Russell:

Some time ago, when I used to take annual mountain trips with W. Follett, I also wrote long and happy letters about it to friends. E.’s gorgeous epistle made me feel definitely wistful. The White Mountains—I mean the eastern ones—are all old friends of mine; and while they are undoubtedly mere foothills when you compare them with the Sierras, still—“there’s no friend like an old friend.” Besides, the White Mountains are at times not only an adventure, but really dangerous; and not only very rugged and glorious, but so lofty and so far-seeing that to you upon their summits they seem the very ultimate, the crest of the infinite itself.

It’s a long time since I’ve had a mountain trip to amount to anything. But the sea has taken the place of the peaks, and I have not been hungry. You might be surprised to hear that a mere steamboat ride to Coney Island and back, is brim-full of possibilities. For one thing, the C. I. boats have beam-engines, which are old-fashioned and truly beautiful, although the passengers will insist on calling them “see-saws.” Such things rub the wrong way the fur of anyone who admires and feels machinery. Then the trip itself is out among all the shipping in the world—down the Hudson between docks on Manhattan and New Jersey; out into the harbor, past tugs and ferries and freighters and liners and tankers and barges and scows and a wreck here and there. And a glimpse of the open sea itself, too, and the faint ghost of the open sea’s lift and fall.

The reason I gave you no address when I wrote from the Zone is that I hadn’t at the time the remotest idea of what it would be. From there we went to Washington, where we stayed two months, I think, during the loveliest time of year. We took trips once in a while down into Maryland and Virginia, sometimes to the Blue Ridges. I like that Virginia farm-land in April and May—rolling and fragrant and welcoming, somehow.

After that we came straight up here, and for a while we were like two goldfishes when the bowl has been upset. We dashed back and forth between New Haven, Pelham, and New York, like mad things. And then we finally settled here—after having “wrassled with dragons,” as Phoebe says. When we took this tiny little apartment, we had no idea that we were landing in such a first-class part of the city—it was all an accident—and we haven’t gotten over being surprised, yet! We contemplate Grant’s Tomb from our front windows (cheerful, isn’t it?). But the Hudson is beautiful at night, with the little lighted ferries slipping back and forth.

Well, we have made port, for the time being, at least. Now the thing is—to pay our harbor dues.

 

With love,

Barbara.

 

A note to Helen while she was in New Haven, written, I think, on September 4th. I’m not sure who “M. C.” was—probably the Champernois in the next letter—one of Helen’s literary agents.

 

Thursday

Hello, how’s everything?

Here is some stuff from that paragon of activity, M. C.

I have jumped up into another class—the second “yump” since I joined. The whole Packard school asks my opinion now!

Fox is out of material over the week-end, which means that I may have to cash the tenner. You see, we’ve got to have an ironing-board. I have exactly one dress which I can wear to school, until I wash and iron a little, and even then I may have nothing but the one. And you can’t wear one forever—at least, not quite forever.

Weather’s improving.

No need for you to come home; everything is O. K., Gabe!

What are you doing, anyhow, and why so uncommunicative? Anyway, don’t drop on me out of the sky without letting me know, will you? That would be inconvenient, as I haven’t even bought towel-racks, yet, and God knows we’ll need towel-racks, about ten of them.

I am having a delightful and restful time, and have no desire for a change (no offense intended). I guess I’m supposed to live alone, anyhow. I don’t believe I’ll ever get married; or if I do, I’ll insist on a house-boat all to myself, on the other side of the lake, or bay, or whatever it is.

Haven’t had any mail from anyone, except Norm, who wrote me a delectable letter from Maine, in which he stated that he was sitting as nearly naked as possible outdoors, and that some fat old dowager (were there any such about) would have quite an experience were she to come down the road at that moment. Such a condition must be a pleasant relief from the chains of Elm Street and Briar Lane, even though he seems to relish his chains. He’ll be down on the 8th—I mean, down from Maine.

 

B.

 

A hurricane struck Dominica on September 3rd, leaving 8,000 dead.

 

[ca. September, 1930—I think the 12th]

Friday

Dear Helen:

I saw Champernois this afternoon, and Champernois (that’s not how you spell it, is it? Doesn’t look right) says that you shouldn’t be discouraged about the MS. There is still a chance to sell it to a magazine—they have a perfect right to do so until it has been published definitely as a book. It is now in the hands of Brewer etc. What did Blanche say?

She also has an idea about some reading for you to do—for The Dial. But this is vague, also. The job for me is to come in sometime next week, I take it. Altogether, I’ve had no stint of odd jobs, for both the Miss Carneys have been using my expert services quite frequently, and paying me, of course, though I resist heartily on every occasion.

I had a grand dinner with Norm Wednesday night. We didn’t talk so much, but we laughed our heads off—just giggled, idiotically and foolishly, you know.

I’ve heard from Frisco, and Frisco says that the Marsodak’s skipper and first mate are changed still again, so that any chance of coming up to New York is all off. Which is something of a relief to me.

Took a test today which I’m almost sure I got a hundred on. The marks haven’t been told us yet, and won’t be till Monday, but I know there was one paper which got a hundred there, and the teacher gave me a curious pleased glance, and furthermore I feel rather sure about all the material in it. If that really goes through, I’ll probably come out with an A and get a Packard Pin or something! Ridiculous, isn’t it?

They are also giving me a course in business correspondence, which is useful and full of pointers.

Norm’s got a yob for me. He wants me to take the forty issues of “Genius Burning” and pick out the best therefrom, to be compiled into a small but delicious volume of poetry. You know, the Hermione gang in Capri. That gang I’m still jealous of, deep down!

By the way—Dominica’s devastation was reported over the wireless by the skipper of “The Canadian National Steamship Lady Hawkins”—thus says the New York Times. The skipper of the Hawkins is Armitt, I think. Sister to the Nelson, anyway. Which is rather amusing.

I’ve heard from Detroit, and Detroit delivers loud and resounding whacks on the back. But Phoebe has gone back home. She was “a very small animal surrounded by apartment houses,” and it evidently didn’t work. But the Russells are planning a gorgeous trip next year in the Sierras.

I’ve heard from Hanover, too. Bless their ’arts.

[a postscript] I’m reading “Far [shorthand mark] Madding Crowd.”

 

The “tragic discoveries in the Arctic” refers to the last camp of Salomon Andrée and his two companions. Andrée was a Swedish adventurer who tried to reach the North Pole by hydrogen balloon in 1897. His team left Svalbard on July 11th, but after ten hours fell to earth. The balloon bumped its way north for two days before its final crash, forcing the men to travel by foot on pack ice, which was drifting in the wrong direction. They survived about three months. On August 5, 1930, their remains were found by chance by a Norwegian expedition. There are haunting photographs of the crashed balloon online.

According to the Internet Broadway Database, Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures ran for 640 performances at the Mansfield Theatre (256 West 47th Street), from February 1930 through August 1931. It won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York City

October 4, 1930

My dear Mate:

Your letter arrived here on Wednesday, the 24th of September. I remember that, because it was sent on the 22nd, and I remember my delight and amazement, and my admiration, too, for this world of wonders. A letter across the continent in two days? What next?!

I sat down at once and wrote an answer to it—yes, the very day I received it, mind you. Then, on reading my letter, it seemed too puny and putrid to exist, and hopelessly inadequate, so I tucked both your letter and my embryonic one away in a drawer. Then came the week-end—a week ago, and I firmly intended to answer you then. You see, Saturdays and Sundays are my only real days, and so I save up everything all week to do then, with the result that I get about half of the things done.

Well, I thought so very much about your letter, and my answer to it, that I thought myself into a state of believing that I had answered it, and it didn’t really occur to me until this morning that I hadn’t, and that my embryo was still lying in a drawer. You don’t know (yes, I guess you do, though) what a day—a week—is like in New York C I T Y (as our friend Leo Meyette always writes it on envelopes!).

Now whatever I was going to say has entirely slipped me, so I’ll begin over, having all day to do it in—that is, if I neglect my washing, and the meals, and my week-end home-work, etc., etc., etc., which I intend to do if I desire.

Your headlines are very juicy. Of the four I deciphered one—the one about the icy doom stilling the heart, don’t you know, and the record thrust within clothing. I suppose that was eventually intelligible to me only because I have been following, off and on, the tragic discoveries in the Arctic. Speaking of the Arctic: the other day my red hair was made to rise stiffly on end (like quills, etc.) by seeing a little piece in the Tribune about an air-plane which effected a rescue of the crew of a trading-ship somewhere north of Alaska—a ship owned by the Seattle Fur Trading Company. My high pitch of excitement (to put it mildly) did not abate even when I learned that the ship was a motorship, with a name which not even a newspaper reporter could have confused with my C. S. Holmes.

Imagine Phoebe studying punctuation and grammar! The funny part of that is that I, also, am studying punctuation and grammar. At the commercial school whose walls enfold me half of every weekday, they require one to take a little subject known as “business correspondence”—more briefly, “correspondence.” This embraces spelling (such words as “separate” and “February” and others that Anderson would laugh at), also grammar (such things as the “can” and “may” hitch, etc.). Apart from this it is quite interesting, and I think I am getting something out of it—although some of my friends would doubtless say that what I mostly need is not a correspondence course, but a hush-up course.

But this is a mere digression. What I started to say in the paragraph above this one is that Phoebe is a brick of the best no. A1 material. Isn’t it disgusting—how Things Are? Degrees and credits— — —bah! To sweat for one’s shelter, clothing, and bread! Ye Gods, let’s go to Tahiti. I like, and I don’t like, to think of Phoebe in school. It isn’t right, and yet it’s marvellous of her to be attacking her dragon by the hind legs and pinning him down.

There is school, and there is school. Sabra seems to be enjoying hers terrifically. She is happy as can be—comes out at one o’clock hopping and prancing and singing. She learns cooking, and handicraft, including carpentry, painting, etc.—really they show a great deal of imagination and skill down there. The children mess around with smocks on, make as much noise as they like (within reasonable bounds, of course), do more or less what they like. As you perhaps know, this Lincoln School is a so-called “progressive school.” That means that children are not “sat on” or “squshed” [sic], or boomeranged with “mustn’ts” and “don’ts” and “be quiets.” Which is an extremely good plan—for that tender age, at least.

“Green Pastures” is easily the most tremendous thing, in a dramatic line, that I’ve ever seen or heard of. I think it beats—for effect and appeal to one’s innermost vitals—Hamlet, or R. and J., or any of the old stand-bys. Is this a literary sacrilege? Well, I can’t help it if it is. When Jehovah (a kindly, fatherly old preacher in a frock-coat) produced the firmament in a terrific thunder-clap, I wept and wept. I don’t know why. They have staged it to perfection. The thunder shakes the theatre. They have a real sea for the Ark, and a long sandy stretch of road along which God walks for miles, it seems, while bushes and trees and houses float past. It is a rolling platform, of course, but one gets the effect of walking forever and ever, and before the end of it comes everyone aches from head to foot, so real it is. I suppose someday the play will leave New York, don’t you? If it ever gets within reach of you— — —well, I guess you don’t need any advice on the subject.

Such things are——what’s the plural of oasis?— —oases, I suppose, though it doesn’t look right. They are— —that— —in a desert of grindstones, inhabited only by dragons with scalesome, flailsome tails. Isn’t that a picture? I bet Phoebe could draw it admirably. Get her to try her hand at it, if it appeals to her. The dragons would be something like Kipling’s Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake, I imagine.

I have set aside a few days around the middle of this month— marked them off mentally with red ink—for the days during which I may hear from my wandering sailor. Of course one can’t tell—I might hear tomorrow, or I might never at all. Rather uncomfortable suspense. I don’t know quite what would happen to me in that case, and I don’t care to speculate. If I don’t hear before November, I shall be worried. I haven’t many bulwarks. My family isn’t a bulwark at all. You are, and he is. He is so simple at heart that he would be laughed at by some of this world, and distrusted by most of the rest—my farents, for example—my fermenting farents. He is the soul and essence of the sea. He can sit on a schooner’s taffrail at night and become so utterly a part of the ship and the sea and the night that it makes you cease your breathing for awe. He is rugged and uncut, and, though so far above the standard of most sea-farers, he still falls far short, in some ways, of the shore-world’s standards. He is ignorant—of the little things that don’t matter. But he is so real that he puts to shame thousands of people who probably would consider themselves far “above” him.

And he answered a need of mine that nothing and no one else could answer, by knowing how to laugh, and by being serene and tranquil and deep as the trade-wind Pacific. Bulwark, oasis, anchor—what-you-will. Mysterious, too, in his comings and goings, as the sea with its tide. A romantic soul. “Sure. Don’t I know? Haven’t I sat on deck in the moonlight and let fancy put on its seven-league boots and go roaming among the stars?”

He and Conrad would have hit it off grandly.

Forgive my “uplift” trend (as old M’Andrew would have said), but one does get a bit romantic and poetic over the week-ends. At last I know what the week-end really means to the hordes and hundreds! Helen and I stand by the front windows and watch the pantomimes across the street and in the park opposite—you have no idea how interesting it all is, to see these hundreds of human figures, young and old and medium, gesticulating and running and arguing and laughing—like a puppet-show, don’t you know. It is excruciatingly funny, and excruciatingly sad—sometimes we laugh at it, sometimes we weep. Always we feel about three centuries old—in comparison to Sabra, for instance, who is so full of energy that she quite appalls both of us.

Well, what’s one to do? Here we are, all of us, kicking and straining and growing black in the face to keep up to some invisible, tyrannical Mark. I don’t know, but I’m in the fight. The shorthand? I don’t know how much longer, but I know that I can’t afford it forever. I think about a month more, and then I shall get a little job out here in Columbia. I have made some important friends, got them interested in me, and built for myself a reputation which I probably can’t live up to. More struggling—to keep up with that. There is nothing very Iridescent in sight. Helen has no job, and neither the MS nor the house is sold. Cheerful! Ja gewis. Fox Film Corp. has given up all outside readers. So farewell to the putrid novels—farewell, also, to that handy little twelve or eighteen dollars a week!

What more shall I say? I don’t wish to end this in a minor key. You are NOT to think I’m discouraged, or despondent, or anything, because that would be disobeying orders, and at sea we respect orders from mates. And anything can be shattered with a laugh. Remember what dear old Satan said about that, in The Mysterious Stranger? “Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”

Besides, it’s Good to be alive and healthy and young, wherever you are, or whatever you’re doing; and there are wonderful things even in the newspapers. In the last Herald Tribune Magazine there were a couple of pictures which an astronomer-artist-engineer had painted of the planet Mars, viewed from one of its own moons. Could anything be more glamorous than that?

 

Yours for fair winds,

Barbara.

 

Old No. 620

October 13 [1930]

M’dear Mate:

I am taking advantage of this unfathomable holiday (Columbus Day, I think) to write to you. The last few days (extending from last Monday to last Saturday) have been as momentous as any days have been for a long time—in fact, so momentous that I haven’t recovered from their effects yet—not by a long shot. However, lest you die of suspense, let me proceed.

Monday, when I came home from school (this was a week ago exactly) I was informed by Helen that I had been solicited for a job, that she had accepted with alacrity for me (wise woman!) and that I was to go to work Tuesday afternoon, for half-time work indefinitely, along with school, you see. The office is the Personnel Research Federation, and the boss is an old friend (more or less) of the family.

So Tuesday afternoon (that’s enough excitement for one paragraph, don’t you think? that’s why I’m changing!) I wandered into this office with my school-bag in my hand and my only hat in (on, rather) my head. That hat was dug up in the New Haven panic, and is at least eight years old, but it was a twelve-dollar felt hat, and one advantage of them is that they LAST. (I don’t know why I put that in.) As soon as I entered the office I was asked whether I took dictation—and how glad I was to be able to say “yes.”

My job is that of any ordinary stenographer (and I am almost equal to it!), and I am enjoying it hugely, and getting twelve dollars a week for half-time, and promise of a full-time position as soon as I finish school; and I have a desk of my own and a large old Remington Noiseless, and it’s a great life and New York’s a pretty good place. There!

But, my dear, that’s a mere fraction!—a puny, putrid, infinitesimal fraction. Don’t faint away. I know one shouldn’t put so much vital material into one short letter, but that’s the way things happen—they drag on forever and ever and ever, and then pile all on top of each other in a rush. I guess you know what has happened.

By the time last Saturday came (that was day before yesterday) I was very tired indeed, and when I left the office Saturday noon I had a curious pain in the region of the solar plexus, which increased, until I was fairly hobbling down Sixth Avenue. I got home all right, but it was a hard job, and I couldn’t think what was wrong with me. When I came stumbling into the corridor at 620, I felt a little better—the worst of it seemed to be over. Then I came into the dining-room, and on the table was your last letter with the delectable headlines, and the explanation of “hunger’s bloated ghost.” (But what about the hopi bean and the baby lima???)

I read your letter, sitting in the brown rocker beside the front window, and I laughed so hard that it was real torture, for laughing hurt where the pain still lingered, and that seemed to me so comical that I laughed still harder and it hurt still worse.... Then your letter was finished.... I leaned forward to lay it down upon the windowsill.

... And upon the windowsill.... I saw.....

 

NEXT PAGE

 

I can’t say this dramatically, so I won’t....

I saw there that very familiar pencilled air-mail envelope, Seattle-post-marked, and flavored with Camels and oakum.

Helen had played that windowsill stunt on me, and damn foolish of her it was. The truth must be told. It was more of a shock than anything else. Of course I had expected it for weeks, but my expectations were always naturally ended as soon as I came into the house from school and saw whatever mail there was. This time it had been your letter—a glorious treat. I wasn’t ready for this that followed. It was like a terrific earthquake.

The result was that—having answered the little note—I relapsed on the dining-room day-bed, and didn’t move the rest of the day nor Sunday morning, wondering what the hell was wrong, and what I should do about it, and what I managed to do to myself. I lay there grinning but in very real physical pain.

The pain is all gone now, and I know what was wrong, and it was nothing serious—I’m not going to die or anything exciting at all, so that’s all right. And I’ve recovered, more or less, and I feel merely buoyant and ready to tackle New York with fresh vigor for another new week, beginning this afternoon, in the office of the P. R. F.

You can imagine, of course, how disorganized the poor man is. It was only a tiny note, just saying he had arrived. It was dated September 7—instead of October 7. That’s a good enough illustration of what a long voyage of that sort does to one. He hinted, in a way that made my blood run cold—“the breeze of wind you suggested turned out to be a man-sized affair, and it threatened not to be all right for a while.”

O God, these wild people of the sea!

Of course I can’t believe it yet. It’s been a terrible gulf. It will be a long time before things can be as they were. I had half expected that the threads would just pick up again where they broke, but threads don’t do that. There have been too many vital changes. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m still stunned. And I still hear that “man-sized affair” howling about split spars and streaming rags of sail. I know!

When he gets more or less organized again—not before—I shall gently hint that we would both like to see him this winter. I have a good idea that he’ll take the hint. It’s very easy to ship coastwise, especially in the winter, and it’s rather hard to ship anywhere else except offshore. I feel somehow as though we should have to talk and laugh before balance can be recaptured. I am all up in the air now. I have concentrated all my faculties on trying to believe that that little letter is genuine, and not some ghostly aberration come to haunt me. I felt as though I were writing to a ghost, Saturday afternoon.

Stunned but happy, happy but stunned....

Well, was I right? Will you admit that last week was a momentous one? If you don’t, I’ll make you eat your words!

We’re all coming out to California next summer, so beware!

Then here’s to the day you and I can do dishes once more, in our incomparable and sublime manner!

 

Your mate,

Barbara.

 

Twenty-five dollars a week was an excellent wage, particularly for a sixteen-year-old during the second year of the Great Depression.

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York City

November 2, 1930

My Dear:

I heard from your own particular Mate just before your letter arrived, in which he remarked that he had been handing you a “raw deal”—that was how he expressed it. But if, as you say, he is to be happier and healthier because of the change, I don’t call it a “raw deal” at all. That’s just what you would want, isn’t it? I mean, let me quickly say, Under the Circumstances. Of course it is not, NOT as it should be to have a part of oneself drifting about on the other side of the continent from one, is it? But I should think that Washington would be immeasurably more pleasant to live in then Detroitmich, as we write it in shorthand. And Air Mail across is remarkably rapid, though, of course, not rapid enough.

Don’t allow your feelings to be too much mixed about my job. You see, I really am having quite a good time. Don’t imagine that it’s a desperate struggle, or anything of that sort. Taking letters in shorthand is still quite a glamorous proceeding to me; though the last few days I have been addressing fifteen hundred envelopes—invitations to the very formal banquet of the Annual Fall Conference! That is rather monotonous, but it is just part of it, you see; and I like the people I work with—we all get along admirably well—and none of them works very hard; so I couldn’t have landed in a better place for a first job. After November 7th, I think it will be full-time, at twenty-five a week, or thereabouts. That is a remarkably good wage for a person so inexperienced as I.

Helen has just triumphed over a very crooked deal that was going on in New Haven concerning the house. She found that she had gotten into a “nest of crooks,” so to speak, and by supreme courage and daring she managed to call their bluff, and we don’t think any radical harm has been done. She is going to give a little talk soon, about the trip. She seems to be quite cheerful, and is riding the waves in great style. I like to see a ship riding the waves.

The way you are, my dear Matey, and Phoebe, and the other member of the family in Detroit, and also the Deserters—of whom what news, by the way? I hope there will not only be cocoa when next I sail into port, but also Graham Crackers. I laugh still when I remember that colossal carton which Phoebe so thoughtfully purchased for my luncheon one day! Is it empty yet?... Last night Helen and I, with California resounding in eyes, nose, and mouth, bought and ate two large red-gold persimmons.... Not long, now, Matey—not long! I’ll be there!

I really think you are a thorough-going Traitor not to have been dumb enough to have been surprised; though, certainly, you would have been dumb, come to think of it. Don’t think that that “dramatic arrangement” was at all pre-thought-out. It just occurred to me that the announcement needed a page to itself. It occurred to me just as I got to it—not before; and so I just naturally took that page out of the typewriter. It wasn’t until afterwards that I slipped it back in to indicate that the letter didn’t jump off in mid-air right at that point.

The dropped stitches have been carefully retrieved; or, I’d better say, the torn sails have been carefully patched, with marline warranted to hold “till the cows come home.” (Funny, that that should be a nautical expression, but it is used by every sailor on earth when he’s speaking about tying knots!)

It would be hard to tell what a relief it is to me. I don’t any longer get to wondering whether the schooner is hemmed in by icebergs or getting battered by Arctic gales, or any such horridiferous thoughts. He, being a cautious soul, has decided to stay aboard a while longer, because there aren’t any jobs for sailors any more than there are for anyone else at present. The vessel is laid up in Seattle, and he and the mate are alone aboard. They take turns cooking and feeding the cat, and they work whenever the weather lets them. So I guess he’s lucky, and he is certainly quite right to stay where he is. It was, as he termed it, a “professional compliment” to be asked to stay on, alone of all the other men, anyway.

Seems to me this was a specially juicy lot of headlines. The New York Times and the Herald Tribune never indulge in such things, and I chuckle over these long and heartily. I can’t make any of them out, which certainly proves that the headliner is a “bright fella.” More power to him!

More power likewise to the “pot-boilers!”

God bless us, every one.

 

Yours, BF.

 

Wesley Hill, who played the Angel Gabriel, was killed on December 10th.

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York City

December 13, 1930

Heave ’n’ paul! How is you?

I think you are just too kickworthy for anything: how I’d like to get you across my knee. Bother my astral presence!

However, your letter with its little cascade of headlines, did finally arrive; and here I am sitting down to answer it, although if I had the gumption of a weevil in a biscuit (or even half a weevil!) I should be romantically doing the dishes and mopping the floor. Dishes and floor I absolutely refuse to acknowledge on Saturday afternoon. And those dishes can stay there till 1932 for all I care, and the swamp angels besides.

Saturday is a great day. Out of the office at one o’clock. This day I walked all the way home, about five miles, I should say. It’s the first time I’ve done it, but I was feeling so utterly happy today, and it is such a beautiful day, that I kept postponing taking the subway, and saying I’d walk to the next station, and then the next, and so I got home.

To answer some of your questions. What has been happening? Yes, I work full time and on full pay, and I get a great kick out of it, really I do. The saddest thing I know of that has happened is that the Angel Gabriel of “The Green Pastures” was killed the other day by a taxi-cab. The play won’t be itself without “Gabe.” I don’t go to the docks. New York docks aren’t goable to (should I have said go toable) by unaccompanied femininity. It has been mostly Conrad. Yes, Sabra is rather “separate.” There aren’t many excitements to share, and I guess she finds me a rather dull lump most of the time! Christmas? Don’t ask!

I haven’t the least sympathy for anyone who will work four hours on Algebra! It’s positively criminal — insane — unheard-of!

Your descriptions of the California weather made me gasp. Heavens! It can be beautiful, I know! I’m coming, Matey, I’m a-coming! I think the ideal thing would be to live in Southern California during the winter and spring, and get North for summer and fall. You can’t deny, Matey, that L. A. in the summer is — ! & ^ $$ ] ::: ! ç — — ^^^^^ . . . . . . . . (I hope you grasp the full significance of that!)

I admire Elizabeth, and I envy her her studio, and I send her my love. That’s very few words, but there’s a lot in back of them.

Yes, I s’pose the U. S. Government notices an increased return of about $0.30 per week since mid-October, and maybe that’s one of the reasons they have been ballyhooing of late about the return of prosperity. Anderson and I commune continually; we nibble delicately at the earth as though it were a piece of cheese, and we fool with stars as though they were a handful of beads. He (wise man!—) is hanging on to his job for dear life, while I stand by and approve. On the other hand, I hang desperately to my job, while he stands by and approves. Thus we get along, though it’s very unsatisfactory not to be together. I think he writes better and better all the time. His comments are really immortal.

I’ve just read your story again, and oh, I like it ever so much! I do hope Helen manages to get it into the proper hands. Of course it’s not the thing at all for these women’s magazines, which demand pleasant, sweet, impossible stories, brimming over with love interest and the triumph of right. Well, I don’t know: when I glimpse at such magazines, which is not often, I, too, demand sweet, pleasant, impossible stories. I should read them, if I read them, just for that sort of story. Yours is banished from there! But there’s a place for it somewhere—not in the pastures, but up on the high barren cliffs.

Helen is riding the waves valiantly.

I saw a headline today in one of the New York dailies: FAY CALLED CZAR OF MILK PRICES BY PROSECUTOR. No’ sae bad?

May your stars shine!

 

Yo’ frien’,

Barbara

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York

December 28, 1930

Dear Meserveys (or should I say “Meservies?”):

A thousand thanks for your grand Christmas bundle, which did much to make our little Christmas a real Christmas. Having been in wild out-of-the-way spots in the South Seas and such places for the last two Christmases, I found myself very much out of practice this year, when it came to even cards; and this may account for the fact that I appeared to be so very Caledonian, and that no one received anything-at-all from me!

Your choice of gifts was most happy. Sabra was not the only person who was tickled to death over the kitchen set: we all sat around and admired every piece of furniture for a long time. She thinks it was the nicest thing anyone sent her. Fortunate, too, because she has a doll’s house, and the doll’s house happened to be weak on just exactly those items: furniture for its kitchen!

As for Helen’s and my stockings: that shows real insight, and how you happened to hit on our exact sizes is more than I can fathom. Usually people forget that I have large, hiking feet! Anyway, silk stockings were just exactly what both of us needed, being here in New York, and having jobs, etc. The fact is, Helen put on hers to go out to dinner on Christmas day, and I put mine on the next day to go to work! As I said before, real insight!

I suppose you all had a tree twelve feet tall, and about twelve feet of snow besides. We had a tree three feet high! And the snow we had was weak and watery. We thought of you, and wished we might have been with you. It was awfully good of you to have asked us. But oh, this business of working is so very serious and solemn! And there’s nothing to do about it, and I’m lucky to have a job anyway; and after all, offices go on, mail comes in and mail goes out, Christmas or no Christmas; to get Friday and Saturday morning off was an impossibility.

Well, this is all I’ll write for now. It’s just a “thank-you” letter, I suppose; but let me assure you, it means a lot more than most of ’em do!

 

 

Love to all,

Barbara

 

Did Barbara’s well-intentioned “Uncle” have anything to do with her “moral break-down” (Helen’s term) in Tahiti? This is the only letter from Uâ in the archive.

 

Papeete, Tahiti,

January 4th, 1931.

My dear Barbara,

No, — I haven’t forgotten you. You were only a chrysalis in those days, but you held the promise of a wondrous butterfly; otherwise I should hardly have bothered to tell you the difference between the sham of life and the reality.

[He goes on at length about his love for a girl twenty years earlier, and his grail of finding such a divine and ideal love again.]

So, perhaps, now you will understand why I talked to you as I did; I saw (or I thought I saw) a gleam of pure silver in the physical matrix that was You, and I wanted to break away the impeding rock and soil so that, perhaps, some day, in the crucible of love, a pure metal might be born.

It was just possible (one chance in a hundred million and two) that some boy might love you as I had loved her, and I wanted you to be free—yes, utterly and gloriously Free—from all those age-old and encrusted lies and inhibitions of our limiting inheritance and environment, that you might go to him with wide arms […]

If you think back you will remember that I did not again talk to you in the same way after you told me of your engineer, for somehow I could not bring myself to believe that he fitted into the conception of the boy I visioned for you.

[Here he writes about his disdain for the world’s “false standards and inhibitions,” preferring to live with the “unspoiled children of Polynesia.”]

So, Barbara, au revoir, my dear. If you think it is worth while then try to keep burning that inner flame which I thought I saw in a gleam of silver. If you never find the living counterpart of the ideal I have tried to show you, it will not matter in the least.

Think of me occasionally as a sort of well-intentioned ‘Uncle’ who, if he talked at all, would not utter the standardized lies of our degenerate civilization.

 

Your friend,

Uâ

 

620 West 122nd St.

New York

January 5, 1931

Dear Mate! [Alice]

Happy New Year! Five days gone a’ready!

A thousand thanks for your Christmas gift, which was a very happy thought indeed, and which I shall read with the greatest of pleasure—and wistfulness, too, I guess. I can’t forget the torment of Wuthering Heights. It’s a haunting thing to me.

I don’t think it was so very terrible of you to open It before Christmas. It was quite my fault. Then, too, as you know, I am somewhat of an atheist; and to tell the truth quite despise the mercenary thing Christmas has become! The real thing goes far deeper than that.

We enjoyed all your gifts ever so much, including every scrap of gilt ribbon, even! The “edibles” were quite ambrosian (speaking of ambrosia!) The soap-Santa-Claus made such a hit that it hasn’t been used yet! It’s one of those sad problems: “You cannot eat your cake and have it too.”

We had a three-foot Christmas tree and a lot of fun buying things for Sabra, mostly from Mr. Woolworth. That’s about all.

Well, to tell the truth, the graham crackers which you so subtly allude to, Matey Mine, are somewhat more chocolate-covered than before—not to say “gilt-edged,” which doesn’t seem to fit the metaphor so well! I’d hate to think you really were so blind as you suggest that you are.

Anyway, Christmas is gone, and here is another year, brand new, just out of its chrysalis!

Thanks again; and to all of you I wish the best luck in the world.

 

Your pard,

Barbara

 

Pardon the puny dimensions of this, won’t you?

 

Helen was successful in getting Magic Portholes published by the Junior Literary Guild (now called the Junior Library Guild). Helen Ferris, the editor-in-chief of the Guild and a close associate of Eleanor Roosevelt (who was on the editorial board), chose it for publication in June 1932.

As for Helen’s “radioistic ambitions,” there are a few scripts in the Columbia archive but I don’t know if they were ever performed on the radio. However, Helen was interviewed several times on air about her adventures with Barbara. There are transcripts at Columbia, and there’s a photo showing Helen and other guests on the Herald Headliners (Boston Sunday Herald) program from March 5, 1933.

N by E was Rockwell Kent’s report of his voyage to Greenland in 1929, where his boat was shipwrecked.

Alice’s daughter Elisabeth Lewis was a talented painter. Her work was featured on several covers of House Beautiful around this time (see, for example, July 1933).

 

Helen is between the microphones.

 

620 West 122nd St.

New York City

February 24, 1931

Dear A.D.R.:

I hardly dare to write to you at all now! Oh, I admit it, I admit it, my dear, it is simply horridiferous of me to have neglected no. 2001 so very long. I know—I don’t have to be told so, or mercilessly scolded, or kicked, or shaken!

Human nature, I’ve decided, is a very ornery sort of thing, when all’s said and done. In spite of my inward resolution to make no excuses for my long, dastardly silence, I am going to proceed at once to make some! To begin with, Helen has been down and out with the “flu.” She’s been up for some time now, but for several days the place was pandemonium, and there was no doing anything save just dragging along from one hour to the next. Everything seemed as wrong as possible. Even Anderson, the unfailing standby, was summoned up-sound with the owner of the ship, with the result that I didn’t have any word from him for over two weeks, which was uncomfortable. I learned afterwards that the two of them had been cutting down a tree for a new mast for the schooner. Still romance in the world, eh, what? I like the idea of cutting down trees for masts—in 1931! Seems too good to be true.

Even at the office, things were deadly, as the Director had to go out West to a big meeting, to deliver a couple of addresses, etc., and when he’s away there’s hardly anything to do down there; and if there’s anything I hate, it’s keeping up a semblance of having something to do when in reality I’m not. The time hangs awfully heavy at such times. Now, however, Helen is well, A. is back, the Director came back today; also a deluge of proof for the technical Journal came in in the morning’s mail, and my down-town desk is loaded!

I have other exciting news. The other week, in pursuing through the Shipping News, I came upon an item about my old schooner, the Frederick H.—that is, of course, the Norman D. It seems she had gone ashore off Mount Desert (Maine) in a gale o’ wind, and damaged her rudder. (Follett would know about Mount Desert.) Well, that set me thinking. I got to thinking about that “worthy mariner” (as Anderson calls him), Mate Bill, and how he was, and how Mrs. Mate Bill was, who wrote me once; and whether the schooner was badly knocked up, and whether Bill still remembered at all the little red-headed girl who kicked about the decks of the Frederick H. so long ago, when she was only about up to her own shoulder, or less!

So I typed off a letter to Mate Bill. And in reply:

 

Port Greville

Feb. 12. 1931

Dear Barbara

we got your letter O K and was glad to here form you again. Bill is not home so he got me to drope you a line Bill was in Frederick last summer and this summer to he left hur about 3 weeks befour she went ashore she is in river now not hurt much. we was tacking about you about a week befour Bill got your letter he was useing knife you give him and sed I like to no ware Barbara is now he though he would never here form you again Bill sed he would make you a boat like Frederick and take it up to you in summer.

if you think you could fine him he would let you no Bill ofen speek about that man that came down in Frederick and would love to see him I am send you some snaps of Frederick H. now Barbara I will Close for this time Please write soon again form Mrs McClelland

Bill working in woods about 16 mile form home he diden have aney chance to write he in a camp with about 28 men so you see he would have no place to write please excuse him

 

Real honest-to-God sterling people? Yes! And what difference does it make whether they can spell or not? Not a sand-small bit— though of course it’s preferable, I think, to have, as a steady correspondent, someone who can spell and punctuate and form good Anglo-Saxon sentences and paragraphs!

Well, I was overjoyed. So it seems I may be seeing Mate Bill this summer, “if I can fine him” that is, which I think I can do, even among the dingy, complicated, disgusting wharves of New York. If I do, there will be a story. And yet—I confess I have a vague fear when it comes to seeing Bill again. Bill remembers me as a little kid. I’ve put on so much stature, etc., I’m afraid he may be rather flabbergasted. However, I don’t see that I could have done anything about it; though I do think it would be nice to have some magic gift by which one could become twelve or thirteen years old at will. Don’t you?

Other news I have none, I guess. Helen’s manuscript is battling for dear life. There are three very powerful ropes out now, and any number of smaller fish-lines. Some of it is in the hands of St. Nicholas, which has so far reacted favorably. Helen, with the help of a new-found actress friend, is dramatizing it with radioistic ambitions, as perhaps I’ve told you. And then the Junior Literary Guild. One of the three ought to happen. I should think, anyway! If all of them happen—but that isn’t to be expected. But if any one of them happens, it will help the other two!

She herself is working like an Injun most of the time. I, on the other hand, ain’t working no more than I have ter!

Sometimes, still, I spend week-ends at that quiet, timid little house in Pelham, with the elderly poet and his elderly wife. I spent this last week-end on holiday with them, reading Sherlock Holmes and Sat. Eve. Post stories, and in general having a good relaxation. I also did some writing. I find it rather difficult to get all the writing done here that I might like to do. It’s rather thick at times!

Have you heard anything, or seen anything, or felt anything, of Follett? Or of The Other? I wonder, I wonder, what they can be doing, and how they are, etc. How’s that “menial job” which Follett said he had?

Your story, I regret to say, hasn’t sold yet. I’m going to take it down to Ethel Kelley next week-end, and read it aloud to her. She is a very precious friend of both Helen and me, you know; and is well up in literary things, and knows a lot about possible markets, etc., even if she has been flat on her back for three or four years.

The only other bit of news is that my German friend, the young and fair-haired second mate of my last steamer, the Marsodak, came for a “wisit” with me the other week or so. I came home from work and found him sitting at the table with Helen, laughing, and looking quite like himself. We had a very jolly time. He went out and bought two immense porterhouse steaks about three inches thick, and a dozen pastries with whipped cream in them. Lord-a-mercy! when these sailors get ashore! That’s one thing I like about A: he doesn’t force fanciful boxes of candy upon one at every corner. But the German mate was very entertaining, as usual: he spun yarns till nearly midnight. It seems his ship, the Marsodak, is laid up in Baltimore: he got transferred to another of the company’s ships, which just came into New York. He was shivering, however, and talked a great deal about California, and his favorite town, San Francisco.

The weather has been rather beastly, though not half so bad as I expected. It’s been alternately cold and warm, cold and warm, all winter long. There’s been real northerly spice in the air, and quite a lot of snow; and there have been some of those clear, cold, north N. E. (that stands for New England!) days that make one feel very virile and full of life and energy. These last three days, on the other hand, have been gloriously like spring itself.

In your last letter you commented with great, great enthusiasm, on N by E. Funny that our tastes in literature should clash, even a little, isn’t it? I can’t praise the book with the whole-hearted eagerness that you do. You say that Rockwell Kent is a Man and a Seaman. I don’t think he is quite either. There are some gorgeous bits in the book, and I love some of the pictures; but damn it! there’s too much Rockwell Kent at every turn! I have a feeling, also, that there’s affectation in the book—it doesn’t quite ring, to me, with the genuine wholesome sound that it ought to have. It can’t be said that I am prejudiced, either, because I started out with the feeling that I should certainly admire and love the book straight through. But it doesn’t seem to me the book that his earlier one, Wilderness, is. (Pardon this atrocious sentence!)

Another thing that doesn’t ring with me is the breaking up of the little party.

Another thing that’s out of place is the episode of the Greenland girl.

I’ll tell you, though, of one really gigantic piece of writing that has come to light. It’s in the February issue of Harper’s Magazine; and it’s William McFee’s article, “Engine Room Stuff.” Now on the whole I have had occasion to be hugely disappointed with McFee’s writing. But this one piece is epic, cosmic. It’s without doubt one of the best short pieces of writing I’ve read for a long time. It has, in fact, only one bad line in it—which one can skip when reading it aloud to friends, as I do. I suggest that you dig it up. It’s far more than worth the trouble.

My love to the fambly. I suppose B. R. is in Washington, now. Alas! These continental separations! Atrocious, aren’t they? If you will give me his address, I think I’ll write to him again shortly. How’s Phoebe? The House Beautiful covers are GRAND!

There are lots of things I should have said that I haven’t, I’m sure. Yet this is, at least, a starter, isn’t it? I hope you don’t feel too thoroughly exasperated with

 

Yours ever,

Barbara

 

It’s not surprising that Barbara wished she and Phoebe were better friends. They were almost exactly the same age—Phoebe being three days younger (and Elisabeth six years older).

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York City

March 12, 1931

My dear mate:

How glad I am that our last letters crossed in the mail! I had a genuine feeling of shame when I received that little admonishing letter of yours—but think what that feeling would have been had I not been secure in the knowledge that my letter was on its way to you as fast as the faithful little plane could take it. Just think! Only three days from me to you, clear across this old continent—two days if you happen to hit the mail just right! How many months did it take in olden times?

Well, anyway.... Everything is going well here. Helen’s book is, I believe, on the very threshold.... Oh, I know, it’s been on that threshold a very long time! The job holds. Anderson is marvellous. Honestly, I don’t see how I could possibly get along without his twice- and sometimes thrice-weekly communications: all done in the best Andersonian manner, and never less than two pages in length. He is—a rock.

I have had two other bits of mail lately that have been interesting, besides the letter from Mrs. McClelland. One came from my dark suitor in the Tonga Islands. In his quaint English he expressed the opinion that it was a “poor world.” The other was from a half-caste girl whom I knew in Samoa, and came to like very much. I thought she had by far the most personality—as we measure personality—of anyone I met down in those outlandish parts. At that time there was something in the air about her marrying a white man—a wireless operator aboard one of the Navy ships, I believe. That was two years ago. I was interested to hear this time that it was still in the air—in fact, she is to be married in April. I am a little distressed of course, because I don’t like inter-racial marriages, and can’t help having doubts about the man. She has great dreams of coming to live in the States. Poor child! A Polynesian is a “nigger” here, you know. If only one could say those things. But no—you have to be silent.

It does seem too bad to let Phoebe grow up. I know you won’t try to prevent it, though, for of course you realize that that is misery-making. Oh, Mate, I can give you all sorts of sage advice on those points! I remember certain things so very well, you see—things that have grown a little less real and vivid, perhaps, to an older person. I think growing up could be a most glorious experience. But, oh, it can be so ghastly.

Incidentally, I wish Phoebe would write to me someday when she feels like it. I wrote to her two or three times, and hoped for a brief word sometime. I got the impression that perhaps she was very much disappointed with me—and I honestly don’t blame her. She started out with the idea that I was such a romantic character, you know, and of course I wasn’t. I felt at the time that perhaps she had built up something around me that was too iridescent and fragile and beautiful for any mere mortal to live up to. Oh, I know.... Butterfly wings .... Touch them, and the powder comes off on your hand....

I have been meditating a good deal the last few weeks on the rather abstract problem of whether or not I should go to college—that is, of course, assuming I could get in, which I doubt. I don’t feel the faintest ray of desire or enthusiasm—in fact, I feel a decided antipathy. But I do believe it to be an asset, if you can display your A.B. or B.A. or whatever it is, when applying for a job. I have decided to get the opinions of several of my friends, on the subject. That doesn’t mean that I will promise to follow their opinions, of course, even should they all turn out to be “for” it—it just means that I am interested to see what they think.

I am not only vague in the extreme on that point, but I am also vague about the immediate future—this summer, I mean. The building we are living in is to come down in June, at least our lease ends in June. Helen wants to go away somewhere. I do, too, but if the job holds I intend to cling to it with might and main. I don’t believe it will hold all summer, as the Federation goes very slowly from June to about September. If Anderson were going to be here I should certainly make some sort of effort to see him, but he is going up North again, as perhaps I told you. Not such a long trip, he says, but I feel rather bleak about it. He is going because he wants the money and is saving it—For A Purpose. Also, times are so damned hard, he thinks quite rightly that he had better stick while the sticking’s good! So with him away, I don’t care much where I go, but I certainly want to go somewhere. Anywhere Helen decides on will be agreeable to me, I guess. We’ll probably hunt up a schooner and sail to the coast of Maine, or maybe to Nova Scotia—or maybe in another direction entirely, toward the West Indies. All things hang on two “ifs”—if my job doesn’t hold, and if the book goes. Otherwise I guess we stay here—(Heaven help us!)

I’m writing a preface (trying to, I mean) for the book. They think it will give it the punch of authority and genuineness, if you know what I mean. I’m hoping to be able to pull off six or seven good pages, but have produced so far only a bit of garbage. You know. When it’s done I’ll send you a copy for criticism. I’m also sending out two or three other copies to my friends—when it’s done. That’s the way Dr. Bingham, Director of the Federation, always writes an article, and I think it’s a good scheme.

Well, I guess that’s about enough dribble for this time, isn’t it, Mate? Anyway, you can see that I’m at least making quite an effort to take my life and put it up on a peak where—alas!—it isn’t. I’m happy in the effort. And I love you. You and Anderson are the two best friends in the world.

 

Yours,

Barbara

 

Fugamisi

30th April 19/4/31 [sic]

Dear Miss B Follett.

I received your most welcome letter with best.

I got your letter last night, and I am very happy to hear some good news from you and also from your mother,

I am very pleased to hear that you are ready to come back to the Is.

[…] Please dear I want you to come back again to see me.

I am back from trip to NZ last month. But I want you to come here and I can take you to NZ with great love.

[…] I am very please to get a Photo from you my dear. Well give my love to your mother also your friends.

Now I am closed with best wishes to you. I can send my photo next trip. I haven’t ready yet, because I am very busy.

 

I remain

Your best recard.

K. B. Riggs

 

Anne Meservey had found a summer cabin for the Folletts in Norwich, Vermont—just across the river from Hanover, New Hampshire, where Barbara was born. (Barbara’s half-sister—my mother, Jane Follett, who also was born in Hanover—lived with my father in Norwich when my sister was born in 1961—again in Hanover. Alas, my sister died within twenty-four hours.)

 

620 West 122nd Street

New York

May 2, 1931

Dear Anne:

It is wonderful about the cottage in the woods. It isn’t too far in the woods, is it, for three females without man, dog, gun, or car? But I trust you for that.

When we can come is still a little up in the air. As I wrote you, Barbara can’t come anyway until July. It is possible that I may be detained here for some weeks in June myself. That depends a good deal on what I hear from a publisher who has my manuscript now. I expect word this coming week.

Would you and Oxford like my old canoe? So far as I know it is still in excellent health—an Old Town. I don’t like to give it to Mrs. Stanley, but I shall probably do so unless you want it, because I don’t know what else to do with it. It is in the Sunapee cottage, with a rowboat that belongs to me also. If you have a car, it wouldn’t be such a difficult job to hitch it on to a trailer and take it up to Hanover. I shall probably never go to the cottage again at Sunapee.

You mustn’t consider being financial host to us at all. Barbara and I can do that. That you want us to come, and anticipate our coming—those are the things that matter to us.

I’ll write you next week. Perhaps I can tell then when I will get up, but at this moment I can only say that I will come sometime.

 

Love from

Helen

 

“SOME of those things ought to come through!” None of them came through apart from offers from Macmillan and the Junior Literary Guild.

The novel Barbara had begun in her new, curt style was Lost Island.

 

150 Claremont Avenue

New York

June 1, 1931

Dearest A.D.R.:

I am really almost afraid to write to you at all. I feel quite dastardly, and all that. But I’ve been endeavoring to do sixteen different major things at once, and you know what that is like. Furthermore, the scheme of the universe was just about as full as I could manage, and I had to keep going pretty tight to keep up with it at that. Now there is one extra corner. You can have it!

Your last letter was really a very grand one. Maybe it will help a little for you to know that I answered it twice, or started to, but the answers never got finished! Also I never received the headlines which you enclosed in it. They had a tragedy. You see, I opened the letter as I was on my way from the house to the subway station, and so they blew away! I chased them a little, but there was quite a wind, and they eluded me. Of course, knowing your habits, I should have been prepared.

The best thing that letter contained was your news about B. R., and yet YOU merely appended it in ink, as an after-thought! It is too grand to be true that someone is going to see somebody they want to see. I envy you and rejoice with you all at once.

We have some rather good developments of late. Helen’s book is TAKEN!!!!!!!!!! By Louise Seaman, of Macmillan. Furthermore, it seems that now it’s been accepted, and a generous advance offer made, certain other publishers in N. Y. are on its trail—which is flattering, you know. Well, the joke’s on them.

Now, I don’t want this to be mentioned. It’s a great secret, for the time being. You must share it only with Phoebe. Helen is very anxious to have it a surprise to W. F., and for that reason I think it would be better not to tell even the Deserters. Furthermore, the Contract isn’t actually signed, nor the Check received; but it’s as good as done, and I don’t think it can really go wrong now.

There is still more editorial work to be done on it. It was accepted on faith, so to speak. Helen has gorgeously revised the first four chapters, and the faith is that the rest of the book will be pulled up to the high standard of those four. That will be done this summer. The book will doubtless be out next spring.

Helen says she’s going to get that book serialized before it’s published, then accepted by the Junior Guild, then published, then radioized, and perhaps a few odd chapters accepted by Harper’s Magazine in payment of the Debt! Well, SOME of those things ought to come through!

Other things have happened. One sad one. A. has gone, of course—which leaves the corner in my time which I was speaking about before. I’m glad to have the corner, of course, and yet — It was more of a jolt than I had anticipated. I feel quite nebulous, not quite sure of whether I’m here.

Other things have happened. We’re moving, as you can see by the heading. Just an apartment round the corner, because this building is to be torn down, beginning tomorrow, supposedly. The new place is bigger and airier and sunnier and expensiver, with a grand view of the New Jersey hills, Grant’s Tomb, and the rear of the statue of Butterfield.

Other things have happened. I’m to have a two months’ vacation, and we’re moving up to Hanover to spend them in a little cabin in the woods, just across the river from our old and dear friends the Meserveys. Really in the woods. Wood-thrushes and crickets and pine trees. Oh, my God! And stars, and smells, and green grass. A little log cabin, all furnished, facing Mt. Ascutney, for $20.00 a month. Not too extravagant, eh what? I shall climb mountains and tear around. Just the worst two months here in the city. What luck! July and August.

Other things have happened. I’m writing a book. A good book. The one about wings. The first chapter is done, and the second is well under way. The plot is mapped out rather clearly—in my head. It begins rather dismally, but soon acquires some sun. There will be sea (naturally), and a romance (?), and a satisfactory amount of misery. The plot is exceedingly old and trite, but it’s going to be handled in a new way. It’s about a shipwreck, an island, and so on. But it doesn’t turn out very well. It leaves you a little poised in mid-air.

Well, I think that’s all that has happened, summed up in brief. I think you’d better move east next winter. It’s going to be a good winter. I’m to have the same job, “with added responsibilities and an increased stipend.” The last clause is particularly inducive, I think. “Increased stipend” has a pleasant ring, has it not? Someday I’ll buy an island yet! Or a boat. Or both.

As I said, it’s going to be a really good winter. Helen’s book will be on its exciting trip through the press, I shall be working up mine, plus a few articles for Harper (say I lightly!). We’ll have a little more breathing-space, too. Why, I shall even have a room all to myself, which I haven’t had for ever and ever so long. And how I shall work!

I was going to say a lot about your comments on college. But that is so long past that I’m quite out of the mood at present. I saw your points at the time, I believe; in fact, they were obvious points. But somehow I don’t believe it will happen. Everything can’t happen, you know. I’d rather cut it out than some of the other things. One has to choose. The point is, weed your garden, don’t you know?

What are you doing, and planning to do? Damn, damn, it’s a long time since I’ve seen you. Come east next winter. It looks as if I shouldn’t go west for some time yet. Got to stick at the wheel and weed my garden. But it’s really awful how all my best friends are thousands of miles away. It’s as if I had a cursed circle around me that my friends can’t get into. A geographical circle, I mean. The only real friend I have in New York is Ethel Kelley, and she’s too sick to see me at all most of the time. When I want her most, she’s invariably too sick. Also, she’s trying to write a book too, and giving all her spare energy to that. The only other person who is at all in reach is Norman D. of New Haven, who comes down to N. Y. once in a while on business. Otherwise, I’m damned alone, if you want to know.

But that doesn’t matter, and isn’t interesting anyway.

This style of writing of mine sounds rather curt in a letter, doesn’t it? It’s a new development. I think I rather like it. The novel is more or less written in that style. Some sentences which aren’t really sentences, you know; and no long, involved ones. W. F. wouldn’t approve of that, I suppose, he being the champeen sentence-twister and wordsmith of the generation! Incidentally, any news of him? And don’t forget! He’s not to know about Helen’s book.

Do you remember that beautifully involved sentence in the introductory sketch to The Scarlet Letter? It begins “In my native town of Salem....” and ends, halfway down the page, “there stands a spacious edifice of brick.” Words to that effect. In between those two clauses, which are the complete structure of the sentence, he describes the whole town of Salem, I should say, with dashes and comma-dashes and semicolons galore. Incidentally, it was my first reading of the book, just yesterday. I never could plough through Hawthorne before. I used to get snowed under before I could find out what it was all about. But I got such a tremendous kick out of that book that I had an attack of hysteria or sumthin very like it. The suspense is crushing, and the whole structure is built up magnificently. I didn’t know he wrote like that!

That’s all I’ve read for months. Except galley proof, of course. There’s always lots of galley proof to read, when a good eye is available. I read just about all the proof that comes into the office, and am getting quite famous for not passing up errors. Very uninteresting material, though, for the most part. Scientific and technical and deadly dull! Scientists can’t write a good English sentence, somehow.

Anyway, I still think Lord Jim is the greatest book in English, and a point above Nostromo. Tell W. F. that when you see him. Then he’ll know I still disagree with him!

I suppose California is getting hot. We’ve been fried and frizzled the last three days. Helen and I have been carting basketloads of books across the street to the other apartment, and we’re about done up. I think S. F. would be grand about now. But not so good as little old Hanover!

I hope you’ll condescend so far as to forgive the long silence and write me. I’ll try to make up for it; but my tryings never seem to amount to very much. Letter-writing is a delicate matter. It has all sorts of strange bumps and valleys. It’s a quicksand affair. But even quicksand serves to pave a river with.

 

Yours with love,

Barbara

 

150 Claremont Avenue

New York

June 28, 1931

My dear A.D.R.:

I wonder, wonder, wonder. IS anything wrong with the R’s? I’m rather worried. I’d hate to think so. Or HAVE I done anything wrong—other than not writing for a long, long time?

Sometime I’ll tell you why that long break occurred. It was horrid of me, I know, but I was in a snowdrift and could not get out, and didn’t care much.

Or maybe that last letter of mine went wrong—in which I told you about Helen’s book and Macmillan’s acceptance of it; and also of my projected book, of which three chapters are now in existence. Maybe that letter smashed in an airplane or sumthin.

Anyway, I do want to hear from you — ever so. About how you all are. I suppose B. R. has been west by this time, hasn’t he? Or did something slip up there? I am rather worried. I do hope that everything’s well with you and yours.

My love and Helen’s to Phoebe, et al., and plenty left over for yourself.

 

Yours

B.F.

 

P. S. If it is true that that letter didn’t reach you, please don’t say a word about this to anyone. W. F. mustn’t know — yet!

 

July 4, 1931

Dearest A.D.R.:

Your letter came just in time—I leave tomorrow morning early for the month, and Helen follows in a few days. The address will be: ℅ A. B. Meservey, 24 Occam Ridge, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Oh, I am so sorry that things are going so rottenly for you. There is no justice in Heaven or Earth, it seems. Really, I cried over your letter—as if that would help any! How I wish I could do something! My heart would tell you to pack up and go to B. R. at once. But there’s poor E. So I would compromise. I would go to him as soon as ever her need of you is abated a little. I don’t believe it’s a case of Money, A. D. R. ... But then, of course I am probably all wrong. Only you mustn’t say that about not seeing him again. You mustn’t even contemplate such a thing. There is a limit to what the gods can do, you know.

There are three chapters of my book in existence now—pretty fairly good I think. Its title so far has been “Lost Island.” Does that sound intriguing? The few persons whom I have so far confided in have liked it—also have been enthusiastic over the outline of the story. I am having a good deal of fun wrestling with it.

I think it’s swell that The American Girl has been chasing you for material. That is about the highest compliment a writer can have, isn’t it? And you must find time to do the work. If I think of a rip-snorting Idea I’ll let you know. But maybe you already have plenty of Ideas. Apparently that is the easiest part! It seems to be with me.

There are no further developments on Helen’s book. I imagine it will be out next spring sometime. They are casting about right now for an illustration—a “tropical bird” preferably, as H. says. Whether it will work out I don’t know. Also, we are still revising the MS. One can revise till Doomsday, it seems. We probably will!

Alaska is a Hell of a long way off! No mail until October. But that’s something to anticipate. He is such a faithful soul. Two letters a week, and sometimes three, from the time he landed last fall till the schooner sailed this spring. He’ll come back. I have an idea that he’s unbreakable and eternal.

Oh, A. D. R., I don’t know what to say, but I’m sure you should come east. The bus costs only $55. Could you stand the bus? If it’s lack of ready cash, I could remedy that—yes, even I, incredible as it may seem. And oh, how I’d love to see you myself! Of course, there will not be that old California glamor—that subtle, fleeting thing that surrounded us before. It might be a little unreal. I haven’t carried over much of that atmosphere. But we could have cocoa and graham crackers even here, and I could whirl you around. How about next fall?

Next fall looks just a little dreary to me anyway. To be sure, I’ll have that same job again, and probably it will be a bigger one. My employer has industrial ideals—that your job is your own property, so to speak. But oh, oh, in N. Y. the moths feed on the wings of your soul. This is probably an unhealthy attitude, I know. But I do think the world is rather horrid. Most of my dearest friends seem to be in deep trouble, and I can’t do anything about it.

Perhaps that’s why I cling for dear life to A. He, with no tools and no material, has nevertheless made something most beautiful and real out of life. I don’t know just how. But he is a rock and a shelter. I’ll never forget or forgive WF’s attitude toward him. That was mainly what caused the sharp and sudden break between him and me. It was unwarranted and ridiculous and mean. My respect for WF did its loudest blowing-up over that.... A. is a treasure.

Anyway, you come East this fall—or sooner. One can get to the point where one doesn’t know what to do and consequently does nothing, whereas an outsider, acquainted suddenly with the true situation, at once forms rather definite opinions. Of course, this outsider isn’t pretending to be God! But I know how easily one can let Money rule one—especially if Money is thought of at every step. Soon one ceases to take steps. I know!

If you will come, you know that you could stay here with us—we have plenty of space now, and anything we have is yours. Helen longs to see you, too. You would be quite close to B. R. and could run down to Washington often by bus. I feel sure that everyone concerned would be happier for it. You could rent the house; and if Phoebe couldn’t come too I know she would understand, and would be glad to carry on for a while. And oh, we would welcome you so! So do think of it seriously.

This is a nice, cool, comfortable apartment, with lots of light and plenty of good tables to work on. You could get a lot of writing done. We would all be writing together. Wouldn’t it be fun? Also, we live right near the Hudson River, which is really beautiful at night— dreamy, promising. There is a nice park—a public spoonery, to be sure, but still very nice. I think we could have a grand time.

This is the great 4th of July. It seems strange and incongruous somehow, to hear the snapping of toy pistols and firecrackers. Silly. It makes H. and me a little depressed. Seems so utterly futile.

One very nice thing did happen this week. The Chief wrote to me — at last. H. had been to Boston, and his boat was in. She went down to pay a friendly visit. The letter is more or less the result of that, but that fact doesn’t make it any less pleasing. It’s just the kind of letter that was needed to square that account. It has relieved me more that I imagined, and given me a freedom from that vague and horrid sense of guilt and discomfort. Until now there was still something pending—waiting to be settled. Not it’s all definitely fixed, somehow—the account has been cleared, and well cleared. Until now I had vague feelings of sadness on the subject, which have completely vanished now.

Now for the woods! I am looking forward to sunlight and trees — the Earth. Except for a curious and indefinable loneliness, which I have experienced a good deal of late without exactly knowing why— except for that, I think the next two months will be glorious. One does get lonely in the springtime somehow, when the wind is warm on your face and the grass is green.

I need you a great deal. I know we each have a lot to discuss and propound which we wouldn’t by mail. At any rate, mere quiet companionship would be very soul-satisfying.

Do give our love to the “fambly.” I am holding my thumbs for you, my dear, and I do want and hope and long for things to be better. I won’t say “pray,” because whatever small part of God I may once have believed in, I don’t believe in any more. But I believe in love.

 

Yours,

B.

 

As we will see in August, Barbara’s article for Harper’s didn’t get far.

Coniston was a 1906 novel by Winston Churchill (not that Winston Churchill!) about New Hampshire politics. The small town of Coniston was based on the hamlet of Croydon, New Hampshire, five or six miles west of New London.

 

Norwich, Vermont

July 14, 1931

Dear Mate:

The Meserveys brought over your letter yesterday, and I was very glad to have it, even if it was a rather sad sort of letter. Although I still doubt whether the gods are “equal to anything,” I know they are equal to a hell of a lot, and I’ve been worrying about “you-all” a great deal. I’m awfully glad that E. is getting better. Doctors, I think, are generally pessimistic. They are rather interested in their infernal fees, and they are quite pleased when somebody springs a strange new disease or combination of diseases that nobody has ever heard of before.

I do hope Phoebe won’t crash up next. Or you. I don’t see how you manage to avoid it, with all the mental and physical stress you must be under. Of course, if one can keep from losing one’s head, that’s the main thing.

I suppose you are right about B. R., if he really is that way. I hadn’t thought of it in just that light before. Still, I think he’s wrong; but if that’s how he is he can’t help it of course. I wish, for the sake of all the R.’s, that he weren’t quite so much of a Stoic, or had quite so much of a hankering for self-dependency. Of course I know he wouldn’t want to be “hovered over and looked out for and taken care of and protected”—and he isn’t exceptional in that, because I don’t think any man who is a man wants that. It isn’t exactly a question of “hovering over,” in my mind. Of course a great many women can’t do anything but “hover” (that’s a wonderful word!), but you aren’t like that. I can’t rid myself of the feeling that you could do him more good than harm; but probably you know better. That’s just my feeling.

Anyway, I hope that the “psychological moment” comes soon, when he will be a little bit swayed by his feelings. I do want to see him swayed by his feelings. Everyone ought to be, once in a while. A. and I were discussing that in our sage transcontinental manner just before he left, and we came in perfect accord to the conclusion that you can’t build an intelligent life solely on a foundation of either Reason or Passion. It’s a question of blending them and getting the most out of each, and shedding the husks and putting them in the garbage can. And when A. and I come to a decision—well, it’s a Decision, that’s all!

Please don’t think I’m trying to tell you anything, because I’m not. But I’ve worried a great deal about you, and wanted to say some of the things I’ve felt. And one of the things I feel most strongly about is that separation is Dire. It seems that most of my life I’ve been parted from the people I’ve most wanted to be with. It’s a kind of doom that hangs over me. But it’s a dire kind of thing, that I oughtn’t to yield to. I think togetherness is the best way of fighting sadness and despair, just as cleanishness and good Ivory soap is one of the best ways of fighting drab poverty. I think even you once said that if people were together that was half the fight. I think that holds good. I mean, of course, if the people are congenial, and happy to be together. I merely assume that that holds true of the R.’s.

As you say, it is rather a “weary, futile world.” There isn’t very much to be said for it most of the time, A.D.R. It’s a disappointing Jinx. And the only way of beating it is just not to let it weigh you down. What I should like to do is to pack B. R. up in a crate, labelled conspicuously “FRAGILE. PERISHABLE. HANDLE WITH CARE.”, and address him to No. 2001 via Airmail. This might be utterly the wrong technique, I can’t pretend I’m right, but somehow I’d refuse to let the old Jinx cheat you out of everything. It’s bad enough as is, without all these damned infernal separations.

It’s strange that I should be given a physical endurance, at least, that is nigh unending, and yet that I can’t come out and scrub pots and pans and do the cooking, or tend the store in the desert and help Phoebe out. I’d be very good at that sort of thing. I’m getting quite Practical. But I have my own little circus, and have to run it. It’s only a one-ring one, but it’s all I can handle, as sometimes the elephants are rather unruly, and come near squashing me against the wall.

This summer won’t grant much of a respite, but it is a grand change. I do ninety-five per cent of all the work that is to be done, which is considerable of a job in a camp. But I don’t mind that. What I do mind is an article I’m still trying to write for Harper’s. I’ve decided that that is going to be done this summer, whether or not I get much ahead of “Lost Island” (which I probably shan’t). But “Lost Island” is pretty well started, and I don’t think it will miscarry now. Three long chapters, and the story well under way. The next thing really is this Harper article, and it’s going to be done.

This little cabin really is very enchanting. It’s up in a pasture, on a hill, with sumac in front, and hemlock and woods stretching indefinitely behind. The hermit-thrushes sing nearly all the time, and are quite tame. The field is white with daisies, and alive with big orange butterflies. The steeplebush is soon coming out. There is a huge patch of rhubarb down below the cabin a little way, so we have a continual supply of super-excellent rhubarb sauce. The hemlocks make a grand harp to the wind. And it’s good to be wearing old black pants again. They have shiny streaks on them which is varnish remover from the Marsodak; they have spots of engine-room oil on them; they have a streak or two of whitewash from A.’s large brush aboard the Vigilant—in fact, quite an atmosphere.

There’s nothing like these northern woods and hills and wild flowers, anyway. We have the cabin full of wild flowers, just ordinary ones, like daisies and buttercups and meadowsweet and Queen Anne’s lace; but they have a delicate and subtle Something about them which isn’t to be equalled in a Fifth Avenue florist’s window. And I am also peacefully reading “Coniston” for the first time.

So you saw W.F.—well, well. If he gets much sourer, A.D.R., he’ll turn into curds, and have to be combined with a good deal of baking soda and made into gingerbread.... I made a perfect one last night, with some milk that was terribly sour, so sour I had no faith in it whatsoever, since it was solid—but the gingerbread was superb, which just goes to show that you can’t daunt a gingerbread.

I believe that W.F. has become the prince and king of all Fools. I think that probably the reason he and M. turned against A. and were so utterly mean to me about him was that they were somewhat afraid of him because he was upright and honest and aloof and didn’t approve of them. He’s ten times the man W.F. is, and maybe W.F. sensed that—you sometimes do—and naturally would resent it.

Anyway, A.D.R., don’t you lose your sense of humor, whatever happens. If you have that, you can keep your head above water—just. Sometimes it’s by a hair’s-breadth, but still it’s above water. Without it one may as well lay down and die. That you still have plenty of yours is evidenced by the last headline you sent me. I can’t make anything out of it at all. It does sound somewhat vacationy, though I can’t define the reason for it. What masterpieces that headline fella does pull off!

I certainly don’t think there is much to be said for this so-called civilization. It’s barbarous, that’s what it is. The primitivest of the primitive were never capable of such outrages as this Jinx civilization. That’s one of the things “Lost Island” is about—sort of a fling, a kick, a dig at the world. Not a nasty one, just a grieved one. I wish we were back to the cave days. Even nowadays there are some tribes that are happy. Look at the Polynesians, for instance. Naturally we can’t be happy in their surroundings, but that’s not the fault of the surroundings. It’s our fault—and civilization’s. Damn, damn!

But lest you think I’m becoming very despondent myself of late, let me assure you that this is my normal state of mind, when I allow it to come to the surface. That is, I always am grieved at the world. But I usually don’t allow it to come to the surface. I sink it. And I do love listening to those hermit-thrushes. They are divine. And there are a few beings whom I love a great deal, and who make most of what there is of Good in life. But I don’t believe in God. God got discouraged and gave up long ago, and I don’t blame him, I’m sure!

A.D.R., I do with all my heart hope things will come somewhere near right for you soon. If you would come east this winter, even if you still felt that you should keep away from B.R., we’d adore to have you. Why don’t you come anyway? And then if the “psychological moment” arrived, you’d be that much closer. I think that’s a good idea. I think we could find a certain amount of peace, and might really get a lot of masterpieces done. I feel all energy at the very thought. And cocoa is an inspiring drink. You see, friends have to stick together in the face of the Jinx.

 

Yours with love,

B.

 

Norwich, Vermont

August 20, 1931

Dear A.D.R.:

I was glad to have heard from you at last. Of course, I realized that you couldn’t be writing letters; the only trouble being that I worry about you.

After reading your letter three or four times, I felt pretty sure that you were feeling better about B.R. You didn’t dare to say so in so many words, and I don’t blame you—but still, there it is, isn’t it? I was also awfully glad to realize, by your quotations from his letters, that he still has plenty of his own sense of humor, and that nothing can alter that.

As for you, you don’t have to worry about old ladies’ almshouses, or anything of that sort!

When I turned the page of your letter and read the “further happenings of this horrible summer,” I said to myself: “This is more than the limit. It can’t be true.” And I laughed a little, it seemed so utterly far-fetched, if you know what I mean. Well, what can I say? Ye Gods!

Thanks for the clippings. Yes, I sympathize very much with that poor chap who wanted to be let alone and to have a row-boat.

You want to know Things. I should say it was you who had the Things to relate. Helen says that she would write to you, only she can’t think of anything to say, because there is too much to say. She feels for you quite tremendously, I am sure of that. Her revision is all finished now, except for a few details. She is now working on a new prospect, a rather vague one as yet, in connection with radio broadcasting.

We haven’t gone back to New York yet. I may not for nearly two weeks yet. I haven’t gotten very brown, and I’ve worked pretty nearly all the time, but I’ve enjoyed myself a good deal. Somehow I can’t make this summer a parallel with the one of yours that you told me about. I am a bit depressed, and anyway the hermit-thrushes have stopped singing now. But the goldenrod is glorious. I console myself at times by indulging in long conversations with an ancient farmer who has friendly blue eyes and an immense white moustache behind which he smiles secretly.

The Harper article fizzled, because I couldn’t, if you know what I mean. The book may just possibly escape fizzling. I have nearly finished the sixth chapter now. That is about half of it, I should say, because they are long chapters—fifteen pages each. I still hold to my opinion that it’s a pretty good book.

I think it was grand that you got that Thanksgiving story off. I don’t know how you managed it, with all your sixteen worries, each one being plenty for one person at a time. I get thrown all off the track myself by reading in the newspaper some little item about the ice being bad up Point Barrow way.

The thing I have been gladdest of this summer, I think, is that I have been working on Farksoo again, after a long spell during which it rested in a drawer untouched.

I am lonesome as hell, and wish I could see you. It was partly for selfish reasons that I suggested that you come east this winter. The invitation still holds good, in fact, it always holds good. If I ever come to live out west, you’ll come to see me sometimes, won’t you? We can have cocoa and discuss the events of the world. I believe I shall come, someday.

I guess that’s about all. I feel miserable because I can’t do anything, for you or myself or the ice or anything. I think impotence is about the worst sort of curse. If ever there is anything I can do, you’ll let me know, won’t you? And if anything does happen that makes you change your mind about coming east, remember that we want you.

Anderson—God willing—will be back toward the end of September.

 

As ever,

B.

 

Sept. 28 [1931]

Mon. night

Dearest ADR:

Do let me tell you how sad I was to hear about your mother. It must have been terrible for you, when everything else in the world is wrong at the same time. Did she keep on writing that pleasant poetry of hers right through? A life-saver it was, for her, I should think.

Oh, I do crave so to hear some good news from you! Of course, it is good that you have been able to stand up so well under these catapultations, and keep on composing wholesome young men and healthy-minded virgins. It seems nothing short of miraculous. I think you’re a grand scout, and I’m behind you somewhere in the east, with all my strength.

Your husband’s words about Gabriel and the empty belt were glorious, even in their sadness. I love people like him and you. “Like,” I say. Well, there aren’t any, that’s about the size of it. But I love him and you.

Do give Phoebe and E. my love, too. I feel much for the trapped nymph. Being trapped by life, in her case school, is not good for one’s wings. I admire her. As for E., may what gods there be lend aid.

I should treasure a few lines from you sometime when you feel me-ish. But don’t hurry. I do understand.

 

Yours ever,

Barbara

 

Oct. 5 [1931]

Dear Alice:

Your letter comes at the end of a day so atrociously busy and hustled that I simply cannot tap a key on the dratted machine; but I want to answer it right away, because I liked it so much; furthermore, since I don’t ever have air-mail envelopes on hand, it behooves me at least to be more or less prompt with my ordinary ones! Forgive the _________ effects [here Barbara drew a shallow bell curve]: I am unspeakably tired, and my handwriting, as you know, doesn’t amount to much at the best of times.

First I want to mention Phoebe’s poem. I adored it. It is inexpressibly passionate and wistful, with a depth and a wildness to it—also, a preciseness of technique and structure (to be prosaic)—that convinces me that P.A.R. is rapidly growing up. What do you think?

I haven’t written a poem for ____ years. I guess the fountain has gone rusty, and gotten choked up with stale moss. Pleasant thought, isn’t it? But at the best, I could never produce a poem like that of Phoebe’s. If I have any ability at all, it lies in prose, I think.

Your mother was a dear, brave soul. I like the little stanza you gave me. It was sad, because true. Almost everything that is true seems to be sad. There’s almost no magic in the world—in fact, even that “almost” is superfluous!

You might, sometime when you feel like it, give me a bit more out of B.R.’s letters. I do hope so much for him! His soul so gets the better of the world at every turn, that it seems as if his body must soar alongside, impelled upward, as it were.

About my job: it’s all right. We’re working now hellishly hard, because the Fall Conference is impending, and also because of a series of radio addresses on “Psychology Today” (drat psychology!) which we are getting under way.

The book progresseth slowly. You’ll see it, not too long from now.

I hadn’t thought about the farents for some time—bless their little wee souls!

I’m terribly, terribly glad that you feel me-ish at times. That helps more than you know, perhaps. How I would adore to see you! Well, one of these days....

 

Yours,

Barbara

 

P. S. No, he is not back.

 

The “magnificent illustrator” of Magic Portholes (and three other books by Helen, including Stars to Steer By) was New Haven-born Armstrong Sperry (1897-1976). Ten years later Helen would write about him for Publisher’s Weekly (June 21, 1941) after he won the Newbery Medal.

The Kirbys was indeed by my grandmother. It was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1931 and includes a stove catching fire and burning down the Kirbys’ house, à la Orange Street in New Haven, 1923. (The Maine coast story was No More Sea by my grandfather, published by Henry Holt and Company in 1933. It’s not really about the Maine coast but about a mother who moves inland with her son, far away from the perils of the sea. One of the characters, Charlotte Robinson, bears a striking resemblance to Barbara.)

 

150 Claremont Ave.

October 19 [1931]

Dear ADR:

Just a vibration from yours in New York, to let you know that I’m still quite alive, strange as it may seem.

I’ve been doing some thinking about Phoebe’s poem. Would you like me to try peddling it around a bit? Have you, for instance, sent it to Harper’s? I think it’s gorgeous, and she might make a small handful of pebbles out of it. It’s worth trying, I think; though I’ve never had any luck in that way myself.

The only development here in New York of any great interest is pertaining to Helen’s manuscript, which is trying hard to put itself across on the radio. I think it may. If it does— — —! Oh, but I’ll talk about that when it happens—and IF.

Another development there is that she’s put salt on the tail of a perfectly magnificent illustrator—a shy little man who has been down to the tropics himself, and knows, who has an adorable sense of humor, and who can play the ukulele and sing Tahitian songs in a simple sweet way which makes me weep—me! He’s caught, I think, better than anyone else could have done, the spirit of our trip—its gaiety, its colors. You wait till you see!

“Lost Island” cometh along. I’ve nine whole chapters now—considerably more than half, for they’re long chapters.

I’d love to hear from you—about you, and P. and E. and M., and B.R. Are they all still in trouble? Is everything still just as wrong as it has been, which is, I should say, as wrong as possible? I’ve thought of you much and deeply, ADR, though I’ve been dour and uncommunicative. I’ve a great deal of personal faith in you. I’d feel that the world was even wronger than it is, if it kept on banging you over the head.

It seems that someone by the name of M.W. has gotten out a book—the story of a midwestern family, “The Kirbys.” Is it the M.W.? I thought her projected novel was a Maine coast story.

Best of luck and love to all of you.

 

Your

Barbara.

 

P. S. Does this envelope suggest anything?

 

A letter from around November 1931—between the October 19 and December 22 letters, anyway.

 

Thursday night

Dear Adr;

Really, you are too unsubtle for words! As if I could write out such an event! As if there were any words that could convey the tiniest fraction of it! Oh, well, we dense human beings must have words, I suppose.

In words, then, know that he has returned, and all’s well. He has been writing to me in his usual clear, faithful way, and between us we’ve just had the Airmail-envelope presses going to their full capacity. He is one of the world’s best, I think—and if other people don’t think so, they needn’t, and you can tell that to the farents, and be damned to them!

I’m very happy over it all, of course, but not so much so that I didn’t read with something akin to rapture the letter which seemed to say that things are brighter for you in several ways. I am so glad, and may it keep on! All your little items of information were absorbed and treasured. Of course, I was sorry that the editor (damn the black hearts of editors!) couldn’t leave your story in peace. I really can sympathize, too, because Helen’s editor has been something of a nuisance, too.

I can’t write more tonight, though I’d like to. I should have written to you first—but I didn’t. And that always takes me much longer than I plan on. However, some Sunday I shall write to you and do nothing much else all day!

 

My love to all.

B.

 

150 Claremont Avenue

New York

December 22, 1931

Dear A.D.R.:

I’m not sending any cards, either, so that’s all right. Christmas doesn’t really exist this year, anyhow. Six to ten million human beings unemployed and suffering, and the weather messy and warm and rainy, and nobody with you whom you love—well, it just isn’t, that’s all. I’m damned if I’ll send any cards!

You ask for a pleasant chatty intimate sort of letter. You have me stumped, A.D.R. I don’t know where to begin. We don’t go for walks, much of any. One soon exhausts the possibilities of the neighborhood, you know. There isn’t any pleasant little hill.... Ouch! Idiot! Fool! Sabra is well enough, only I don’t see very much of her, and when I do see her usually neither she nor I are at our best. My best goes into the job, which isn’t where it should go; and her best goes into school, which she really loves. Besides, she’s rather outside my pale, you know (or is it pail? I hardly know).

I’m glad to hear the hopeful sound in your words when you mention B.R. Also it’s good to know that E. is writing. Painting? And how is the business-in-the-desert? Phoebe, I suppose, finds it difficult to see rhyme or reason. Well... don’t we all?

The book crawls along—crawls is just the word to describe its progress the last month or so. It’s about two people who found out the rhyme and reason for a little while, but had it snatched away again. It’s supposed to tear one’s heart, you know. If it doesn’t, a little, here and there, then it’s no good. Promise you’ll be torn, A.D.R? I may send you a copy of it before I show it to Messrs. Harper etc. I want to try to get a copy to E.A., you see, and perhaps I’ll ask him to send it to you, or you to him, or something like that.

He remains the best thing that I can see in life. (See???) It’s his steadiness and strength and complete trustworthiness that makes him stand out so, in a complicated and discouraged world. I won’t do any quotationing now, because I haven’t time, but sometime I will. In the meantime, oh, thank God I’ve got him!

I hear that H. is going to do something about your little serial in John Martin’s. I’ve glanced at it, and it really is adorable. Something ought to be doable about it, of course. I hope she’ll succeed. What are you writing now? Healthy things, always? Oh, well, I suppose we can’t afford to do the others until we make our fortunes first!

I want to see you, very much. Who knows? The world is fairly small, when all’s said and done, and I’ve an odd presentiment that I shan’t be sitting at this desk for more than a certain amount of time—another year, say. I don’t know what’s going to happen after that, but I just have a small, dim suspicion, that’s all. If the world has any justice (I never believed it had much), or a shred of happiness in it, or even the most erratic tendency to keep its promises— well, I shan’t, that’s all. And if that sounds vague and mysterious and so forth, it’s just because I don’t dare to do more than vaguely, dimly hint that things could take a sudden turn. (Sudden???) And if the world so much as suspected that I was in danger of telling you anything about its secret mechanisms, it would swoop down on me at once and cut off my head.

My love to all the fambly, and—no, I won’t say “Merry Christmas.” I don’t feel the faintest ray of that sort of sentiment, and there’s no use in cluttering up the air with it. But my greetings, anyway.

As for the poor Hoovers being crammed into art. Well, I don’t feel qualified to give many comments about that. However, perhaps this will give a clue. My new shorthand abbreviation for “article” is “art,” and oh, you, more than anyone in the world, will appreciate and see the irony of that! Especially with the dry, scientific, technical “arts” which are submitted to our little publication, the Personnel Journal!

Oh, yes, I do laugh now and then. In fact, I’m not honestly so gloomy as I sound. I’ve gotten into the habit, I think, of writing rather cynical letters lately. You will make due allowances. I probably say either more than I mean, or not as much.

 

Yours,

Barbara

 

150 Claremont Avenue

New York

December 27, 1931

Dear, Noble Meserveys:

What a box! Oh, Lordy, what a box! Oh, Lordy, Lordy, what a box! Sing, oh, Mighty Chief Oxford, an anthem in praise of that box, in praise of jams, jellys, marmalades, syrups; in praise of sticky ears and fingers and mouths! praise the honey in its comb, and the jars so adhesively snug and dripless! Sing praise to the colorful box, and the tiny box within for a little girl; for pictures of frost and maidens fair; for noble verses nobly sung!

Sing, oh, Mighty Chief, an anthem in praise of all the love that packed the box, of the sprigs of ground pine that smelled so woodsy and good to city noses!

Praise the Noble Tribe of Meserveys for all their love, their hilarity, their goodness, their fidelity! And praise the Maker of Jams, Jellys, Marmalades, who in her infinite wisdom believed in the enchantment and the magic of such gifts for the bringing of happiness, and gaiety, for the sweetening of dispositions, and for the soothing of appetites, to a lesser Breed, a lesser Tribe, a Tribe unswerving in its devotion to the Great Northern Meserveys!

A noble anthem, I ask you to sing, oh, Chief! We praise you all!

Hallelujah! We, lesser tribe of Folletts, bow low with love, with thanks, with adoration. Hallelujah!