Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1081

Letter to his daughter, Marguerite McConkey

Late 1934

 

 

Dear Marguerite,

 

I have been a long time writing you since I last began intending to. Merton wrote me you were not very well and then that you were quite a lot better and I hope you are lots and lots better, in fact, very, very fine by this time. Even where one has a severe physical handicap he can live it down and compensate for it in many ways. Last night I heard some marvelous piano play­ing by a young woman whose right hand is withered and entirely unused. But her expression was fluid and vivid and the fingering so complete and complex one could never have dreamed that both hands were not used. She teaches piano and is also a kindergartner but because of her hand she is refused a license to teach in any but the private schools.

Where we have no physical deficiency we certainly are able to adjust our adequate bodies to our need for satisfactory expression of the forces within. With our happier endowment we do not need the personal power and resources of a Helen Keller, but these transcendent gifts are ours no less than hers if we but will to use them.

You may say that is just the trouble; we do not will to use them. And you will be right if you do. But there is a way in which we can condition ourselves so that we will will and this willing will bring to us the certain power and bring us to the open path that leads to hearts’ desires. This is the magic influence of Beauty, of esthetic experience on the positive side — of feeling that is creative feeling because it is joyous and enlarges our sense of well-being and gives an urge to fulfill our­selves in well-doing. How shall this lovely prize be ours? By loving it. For, as Emerson serenely says, “He that loveth maketh his own that which he loves.” Now, if we love Beauty we will seek it and if we seek we shall surely find, nor can anyone yield himself to Beauty and not love. So I say, make your prayer to Beauty and she will manifest herself to you on every hand and in myriad forms.

You will find her in the hue and form and fragrance of the blossom and the more-than-fragrance you breathe in from her; in the smile of hope that transforms the sorrow­ing countenance and in the light that dances in the erst­while leaden eyes. You can find her in the simple task well done and in all the seeking of the just-beyond and in the hidden meanings of all the acts and things that make us glow with gladness. In light and color, sound and silence, motion and repose, there Beauty lies. The tingle of the frost, tang of the sea, caresses of soft airs and the gambols of lights and shadows among the leaves of the trees — all these speak in a language we can feel, even if we cannot understand. These mystic intimations, however remote in conscious thought they may seem, are of vital reality in the realms of feeling and sensation, for they have profound effect upon the body and all of its parts. Their influence (in-flowing) inspires. It lifts up the eyes, separates the lips from each other, deepens the in-drawing of the breath, unfolds and opens the hands and the other members one from another and gives a sense of capacity and creativeness that forbids all destruction and links with the divine. Under this influ­ence we have more than the will, we have the spontaneous power joyously to pursue and in due measure achieve the richest and the deepest desires. To maintain this state as a habit, to be such a habiliment for the spirit; this is the art of life – the triumph over evil — the transcendence of its opposite in meaning no less than in the arrangement of the letters in the word.

• L I V E

 L I V E <

 

So I am wishing you, my dear, the true life of the spirit in all the experiences of Beauty that the everyday life can so richly afford and that when you go abroad Beauty ever be your quest and your constant attainment and lay upon you and within you her divinest gifts and powers. And by feeling it within you shall you know the beautiful and behold it for, as in Olive Schreiner’s “Dream,” of the three bridges that span the gulf to the ideal, there is one that slopes straight upwards but “it is only seen by those who climb it.”

How I wish we might be together often and seek loveliness together and create loveliness out of the power and joy it inspires in us.

Give little Enid a big lump off from all the love I am sending to you and tell her we must be pals together in a lot of her vacation time, I hope.

Merton, with his deep-seeing eyes, I am sure will glow with pride and shine with delight in the joy of a beauty-illumined life in you.

 

Best cheer and affection to you all.