Better Death in Venice than life in Hollywood. Speaking of which, K.A. [Katherine Anne] Porter is leaving here to live in Venice.96 At the next meeting of the Cats Head Club, will President Lerman please present a motion to change our Formal Attitude toward Miss Porter? She has been an absolute darling to me; really she has, and what is more, during my recent illness, which took place Saturday, she brought me calves-foot jelly and a bouquet of camellias. So far, things have gone well enough. Flo Homolka,97 Operator Aswell’s friend, gave a dinner party for me yesterday, and it was altogether charming, except for the fact that I sat next to a raté (as F McF [Frances McFadden] would say) little man who kept staring at me as though he were planning something unspeakably diabolic; he turned out to be Lion Feutchwanger [Feuchtwanger];98 only I thought he was Franz Werfel;99 that is to say, I said to him, where ever did he get the ideas for such lovely works as The Forty Days Of Musa Dagh and The Song of Bernadette.
I had dinner at the Chaplins’—Friday, I guess it was—a rather viperish experience—and I spent a really beautiful afternoon with Walter Conrad Arensberg,100 who is altogether charming: Cousins Lerman and Lyndon would lose their minds over him, his house, his paintings. But all this business about Persons & Places I will save for a meeting of the Cat’s Heads.
I have had one terrible woe: getting out of the bath tub, I set my foot down on an electrical heating apparatus and burned it to a cinder. No joke. I had to have a doctor and am walking with a crutch.
When I leave here, I am going to San Francisco for a spell. Even so, I shall more than likely be back by Christmas. Meanwhile, keep a lamp burning in the windows, you cat’s heads, and know that I love each of you, all of you. A million kisses, mille tenderesse [sic] from your faraway
T
[Small drawing of a tuxedoed cat with a cane in one hand and a cigarette in the other, with stars overhead]
Aside to Cousin B—I am seeing Miss Parsons and Miss Hepburn—both next Tuesday.
[Collection Columbia University Library]
TO CAROL AND WILLIAM SAROYAN
1060 Park Avenue
New York, N.Y.
Dec. 26, 1947
Hello Carol and Bill; look, here I am back east of the Rockies, with, my dear, a real 1883 blizzard swirling at the windows.101 Indeed, it has been snowing for 2 days, and from time to time I’ve entertained the notion of tying a keg of brandy about my neck and trudging out to aid the helpless.
It was wonderful, the evening with you in San Francisco. I do wish I kept a diary; how pleasant it would have been to reread it on some such page. At any rate, it will always have a permanent place among the pleasant occasions memory manages to retain.
I am happy that Don’t Go Away Mad (a delightful title, by the way) is finished: a relief to you both, I’m sure.102 Here’s hoping the new year brings it to us, an ever eager audience.
By this time, my book is on its way to you.103 Do let me know what you think, negative or otherwise, meanwhile, know that I am thinking of you, and looking forward to your N.Y. visit.
Always,
Truman
[Collection Unknown]
TO LEO LERMAN
[Hotel La Citadelle]
[Port-au-Prince, Haiti]
[February 1948]
Darling Leo,
I did not write before today because it was only last night that I really saw Richard [Hunter]: he came here for cocktails and supper; very pleasant; afterwards, we sat on this beautiful hotel’s most beautiful terrace and talked in the moonlight; about twelve Richard went out into the night and made his way down the mountain to that curious, bougainvillea-covered hotel, the Excelsior. It is somehow difficult to report on our conversation.104 First of all, he seems rather different; he is much better looking, for one thing: lean, tan, quite hard; and he appears to have more identity. I think for the first time in his life he has been really lonely, and that he has been trying desperately to establish a sense of values. But he is obsessed by the situation. Indeed, we discussed practically nothing else. He talked of you with a heartbreaking tenderness, and altogether I am convinced that he loves you more than anything, anyone in the world. And he “knows” about Howard [Rothschild] absolutely, knows and says that he can expect nothing from Howard but destruction. When he comes back, which will be around the first of March, he wants to go away with you, perhaps to Europe, at least someplace where you can write your book, and he can look after you. Meanwhile H. remains something of a sexual idée-fixe, and this is what has happened: he bombards R. with cablegrams, letters, long-distance calls, all of which has sufficed to queer him with R’s mother, and, to a great extent, with Richard as well. Actually, I think R. despises him … in the way the fox must despise the red-coated herd. But his ego, still a feeble thing, draws from it some poisonous nourishment. Which is not to say that I question the wisdom of your reticence: it was the wisest thing you could have done because, all in all, it has thrown H.’s stupidity into a kind of bas-relief. Now yesterday H. telephoned and said that he had booked a reservation and was arriving here on the 16th. However, I would not let this upset me; in a way, it seems to me that H. is bending his head for the côup-de-grace [sic]. R. excuses it on the grounds that H. is preparing to depart for Europe and that he will not see him again. Frankly, if I were you, I should hold judgement in limbo until R. returns; then, if he does as he says he wants to, you should be quite satisfied, and able to forget the whole thing.
Haiti is the first place in a great many years that has excited me; definitely you must come here; but I will spare you the details for a session at the Cafe Flore.
Dearest baby, have I ever told you that I loved You? I do, you know, very, very much. Mille tenderesse [sic], Myrt, and a million kisses.
Marge105
P.S. write me. R. loved the thin-mint valentine. Write me giving instructions
Your Haitian operative
[Collection Columbia University Library]
TO ELIZABETH AMES
1060 Park Avenue
New York, N.Y.
March 2, 1948
Dear Elizabeth,
Your letter made me very happy: it relieved me so much that you liked the book, for, being as it were one of my original sponsors, I felt I owed you, all of you, a great debt. You have been so good to me Elizabeth; and Newton, I don’t know what I should have done without him. So you see, I owe Yaddo a great deal.
I wish I could send good news of myself. And in a way I can, for I feel encouraged and hopeful. But you know I have not really been well the last year or so. I continue to have these physical collapses at every turn. But perhaps I shall be all right now for a while.
Elizabeth, a young writer I know wants and needs very much an invitation to Yaddo. Her name is Patricia Highsmith, 353 East 56th St. New York. She is really enormously gifted, one story of hers shows a talent as fine as any I know. Moreover, she is a charming, thoroughly civilized person, someone I’m quite certain you would like. She is working on a novel now, and needs the sort of thing only Yaddo can provide. I have asked her to write you; if you feel that you can take an interest, then that would be wonderful.106
I want terribly to see you; you are so restful and sympathetic, and there is such a lot I have to tell. Perhaps when you are here next you will let me know.
Meanwhile, know that I think of you, Elizabeth, and accept all happiness from me. Fondly
Truman
[Collection New York Public Library]
TO LEO LERMAN
[Paris]
[8 June 1948]
Myrt, my dearest mother,
C’est marvelleuse [sic], still I wake up every morning a little homesick, and wondering what the other half of this soapsuds drama is up to … and why hasn’t she written me? Though I don’t suppose I have quite the right to point a finger, but one way or another my life has been a riot or Riot, and the thought of detailing such vast activities depresses me no end. One thing that would interest you is that I saw a lot of David Cecil107 in England: isn’t he the one you like so much? He is an absolute darling, and he wants to come to the U.S. if some university will invite him, preferably Columbia. Chicago did, but he doesn’t want to go there. Why don’t you suggest it to [Lionel] Trilling.108 I had a terribly good time in London, but oh dear it is a dreary place. But Paris is madly beautiful, it is the only time in my life I have felt really relaxed; I sleep a good deal, and am eating like a hog, and I think probably it is all going to be very good for me. Also, I am starting to work again. To leave America was the best thing I could have done, provided that now I manage wisely, I cannot describe the relief, temporary though it may be, to be here at such a distance from all the pressures that have made me miserable for so
