Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1392

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Jean Williams, Winchester, Virginia.

July 30, 1941

 

 

Dear Jean:

The mechanics of this missive are without apology —
in view of your precedent, which was entirely acceptable but
could have been very much more so if your handwriting were
not so very legible, which it is, and also very and peculiarly
pleasing to the eye and to whatever it is that gets pleasure
through the eye. It is one of my griefs — almost a major one — that my own chirography should be so unprepossessing.

Thanks a whole lot for the nice note of the 24th. I was wondering and wondering about you — witness, the card of a few days ago. Yours to the Woodstock has not arrived yet but I suppose it will tomorrow.

I, too, have been wondering just where I will be along about August 6th to 8th. I seem to be tied up here for the present — much against my wish and almost alone. There are some matters of looking after property — not awfully important but too much so to leave. However, my daughter, Lucile, returns to New York on the third from a South American cruise and I am practically pledged to meet her in New York and also to spend some time with several other people there and near there in the days following. I wish I might catch you for a visit on the way up here. I’d love to meet you in Washington D.C. and then have you for company on the way up to New York. (Incidentally, you’d love my 194l Oldsmobile sedan with all the latest gadgets, including automatic gear shifting through four forward speeds and no clutch nor need for any with the full fluid drive.) But I suppose the time will be too short to make any such connection with me on your way North. Lucile’s boat arrives early in the morning, so I would have to leave for New York fairly early in the day on Saturday, the 2nd. Pity you couldn’t be here about now so you could visit a while and then go on to New York when I do.

If you should happen again to postpone your departure, say, for another week or two, I might arrange to get back here in time to meet you. As it is, it seems I will have to count on meeting you in New York if you are coming directly there, and then perhaps you can come back here with Lucile and me. I think she is going to visit me a while and it would be grand to have you at the same time — or any other time if not then. And, quite possibly you could do some work with me, since Marie L. for the past two or three months has been having some family affairs and also an affair of the heart with a unit of the British Navy that have been keeping her in New York all the time.

 

Whatever you do, please keep closely in touch with me and I will do the same with you concerning where I am. Especially let me know as soon as you settle on the exact day of your departure so I will be able to wire you if necessary or desirable before you leave. If in any doubt as to where I am. Please write in duplicate to me both here and to the Woodstock in New York. Whenever and wherever you go, I surely want to meet you and have a good visit with you. I am looking forward to it very much. Communication is the very life of both intellect and art. It’s no fun to toss the ball without someone to catch it and toss it back, or at least roll it.

Yes, the loom still rumbles on and keeps fabricating the separate parts, rather intriguing in themselves, that seem to join up very neatly in a design that is overwhelm­ingly large. There is nothing like communication — the sharing of things that seem lovely to the mind — and in the present tense. I get little or no stimulation, inspiration or motivation from the contemplation of great events to be brought about — eventually. The strength of today comes from the inspiration of today.  It is good that you keep confidence in yourself. That is where we get and how we keep the power to act and to do. I know it only too well. I suppose confidence is a form of reliance on the future, one’s own future, bravery; the powers of the intellect and imagination, however excellently or however poorly exercised, do not seem to require it. I had a business associate once who didn’t seem to have anything but confidence, absolute confidence in the future. That made him invaluable.

I have been writing, somewhat, about the three basic institutions of Society — the Citadel (government), the Market (the contract and exchange system) and the Altar (the world of intellect and art) — their absence from the pre-social state (nomadic), their somewhat successive emergence and their parallel, though very imperfect and incomplete, growth and development, and above all, their mutual dependence, in the ascending series, their need of greater differentiation from each other and thus a more harmonious coordination as the three great divisions of the sociological life-form — the social organism. They seem to correspond to the three great divisions in the individual biology: the system of structural tissues, the nutritional system and the neurological system. Each, in turn, effectuates a more complex mode of energy transfer (and transformation): mechanical (physical force), nutri­tional (metabolic energy) and neurological (electronic energy). And the more developed societies, like the higher individuals, depend less and less upon the exercise of mechanical force between and upon each other and more and more upon the exchange and nutritional relationship and upon the culture of each other, the intellectual and artistic exchanges.

So, with a whole lot of compliments and hoping to be face to face with you very soon, as ever, most

 

                     Sincerely yours,