Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1387

Carbon of a letter to Harold S. Roche, #1 de I’Epee Avenue, Outremont, Montreal, Canada

June 26, 1941

 

Dear Mr. Roche:

    I returned to New York, not by way of Albany as I fully expected to do, but upon reaching Glens Falls I suddenly thought of visiting some friends who I remembered were at a Friends Service Camp near Cooperstown, Hew York. Accordingly, I struck out to the southwest and traversed for hours the most beautiful part of the Adirondacks I have ever seen. Recent rains had freshened everything. It was a world of rocky cliffs and and verdured steeps with lakes and streams between. There were few shrubs and but little undergrowth, the brown and grey boles of the trees rising solemnly out of velvet and feathery green swards to uphold sombre masses of dark-needled conifers and the no less fragrant draperies of new born tender leafage on birch elm.

The Friends Camp was in a delightful woodland place full
of vital virile people, in body and mind, who almost make a cult
of simplicity, sincerity and human service. It was an inspiration to be among them overnight and for parts of two days and /felt/ almost a deep sorrow to leave them. I then visited friends In Demarest and Englewood,               New Jersey, arriving in New York on the third day.

 

It was nice to get your letter of the 22nd from Vale Perkins on Lake Memphremagog. I would have liked another trip like that with you — and what a fine fisherman you were.

It has been (and still is) a great pleasure to give account to my daughters and others of the very great happiness of seeing you so much again despite your new business duties and your night­ly labors voluntarily in aid of Victory. I did so enjoy making such delightful and valuable acquaintances through your kind and generous sharing of your friends with me. I should so love to be near the Brays or at least able to drop in on them often. Mrs. Bray is a constant stimulus to both serious thinking and good healthy fun, and Najla, Wivene and Betty Egan surely make the home one of color and quiet charm. Mr. Bray has many compensations — much fullness of blessing — that merely a large income or high credit at the Bank of Health would never be able to buy.

 

And the genial ladles at the McNaught’s! I am sure so great

kindness could never have been extended to a stranger in compliment to any friend less honored in their hearts than you.

I should dearly have loved to see the Thibaudeaus again. What a marvel of refinement and high intelligence their summer home and its furnishings reflected both inside and out. I especially hope to meet, or at least to hear from, Mlle. Madeline again. She is charming, indeed, in both manner and mind, and, I am sure,
a person of use and consequence in the world. I was sorry not to see your dear friend Mr. Bolger again. I did not think our visit

would end so soon. I rather expected he would drive with us the next day or soon.

 

Isn’t it remarkable how Mrs. McNaught’s sister, Miss O’Donnell, if I remember her name correctly, out of the teacup fore­cast my unexpected side visit as well as my longer stop at two thirds of my journey’s length? Please remember me to her.

It was nice to be so much in your happy household and “play­house.” I enjoyed every minute of it and was so happy to bring some of the spirit of it away with me. At the Border I just mentally included it in my declaration as part of my “personal” ef­fects.

Your Mother and Sister Isabel made me think of those lines in “Snowbound” with which the poet described his mother and sister at the “genial hearth fire’s ruddy glow.” I wish I could quote the lines. Please give them my very best and my happy hopes to see the roaming Roches three in this land of Liberty just as soon as soon can be when the War Board sets them free.

Now, my dear and delightful friend, I know you will be kind concerning my sins of omission, and so I must the more be self-condemned to all the reparation and amend that deep and true affec­tion can impart across the spaces that divide the heart.

 

It is good to think often of you and to remember you all.

 

              Sincerely,