Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1426

Carbon of a letter from Heath at 14 Washington Place East, New York City 3, to (daughter) Lucile Heath MacCallum in Mexico.

May 21, 1944

 

 

Dearest Lucile:

Here at last comes the letter so long delayed since your nice long let­ter of last month. I have thought intently of you a hundred times but that same old something still keeps me back from the point of actually writing — in powerful conflict with my desire to do so. Still quite a lot of things too uninteresting to write about have taken up a lot of my time, and I have done quite a lot with the book too. Very recently I have had it all freshly typed with much improvement is both substance and form — also collateral descriptive matter to arouse interest in it. A couple of weeks ago I ran across a very good publisher — the head of the editorial department of a very old and well-established concern that published scientific and technical books almost ex­clusively. He took to it with very great enthusiasm, as evidenced in three interviews and discussions with him, and he is still only about half way through it and we have not talked any business, only the ideas, but I feel sure that through him I Will have an entrée into the publishing world whether his own company actually published it or not. I have also developed interest in two other directions that seem potentially promising.

A number of times I have thought I would like to send a mss. copy to you. Your letters have been so inviting on the subject, but I have not felt like sending it incomplete and unrevised while making so many improvements, and I seem to have need for all the up-to-the-minute copies.

I have been immensely interested and pleased at all the wonderful things all three of the boys have been doing. I am sure their experiences in Mexico have been a wonderful education to them and worth at least a couple of years of ordinary schooling, besides the greater happiness of it all. The cosmopolitan contacts and acquaintances alone must have been wonderful — for you as well as for them. I wonder what your plans are for the near future. Beatrice told me by telephone (I hardly ever write to her, so she phones) that Irvan wants Brother to come back to Winchester as soon as school closes. She didn’t comment on it, nor did I. But I’ve been wondering if the expense of keeping him there is the cause of him being wanted to come back. It seems to me it might be much better for him and for his future for him to stay down there for quite a while longer, especially while his mother is away from home. If you and Beatrice agree with me on this and Irvan Sr. is willing, I would like very much to supply the ten dollars per week or whatever Irvan Sr. has been sending you for brother’s keep until time for school again next fall. If keeping him for the next three months or so should be helpful to you too as well as a pleasure to you and to the other two boys I shall be glad of this also.

I am certainly sorry about the mix-up over the second hundred dollar check. I tried my best to make out from your letters whether you received the first check or not. I was troubled about it quite a lot. Finally I stopped payment on it because I doubted if you ever received it. Even your letter of February 14 did not clear it up entirely. Anyhow, when the check was presented at the bank (the first check, the one on which payment had been stopped the bank wrote me two letters about it asking instructions, but they sent both of them to my Elkridge address where they were held for a long time and were entirely too late in reaching me, so I had to let the matter go and depend on the second check to make up for it. I was only concerned that the first check should have been cashed by you instead of being lost or stolen and improperly cashed. That was the only reason I stopped payment on it. If I had known it had passed properly through your hands I certainly would have released the payment on it, even after I had sent the second check. (I was even a little annoyed that your letters until the last, had been so indefinite on the subject of receiving the first of the two checks.)

Ever since your letter of April tenth, finally clearing up the whole mat­ter, I have thought I would write to you soon and send you another hundred dol­lars. So here I am at last doing it, as you will find enclosed. I hope you do not need it very, very seriously, but if you do then well and good and if you do not then I am sure you will be able to use it generously and to good advantage in a variety of ways. I wish I had sent it long before.

I do hope things have been going well or at least better for you since you wrote last. Let me know soon what your plans now are about corning back to Winchester, or what. I think you must be in a good deal of a quandary about it all. I ‘wonder if, by any chance, you could be interested in the cottage at Elkridge — the one the Lanier’s used to live in. I have had a delightful and very fine tenant in it for the last year or so, but on account of the A.P.A I am getting very little rent for it.

What do you hear from Crawford? Have you any definite money arrangements with him about yourself or about the maintenance and education of the boys? I hope so. It has always seemed to me he would be reasonable and constructive in any difficult situation — if not unnecessarily antagonized. I hope this has proved, or will prove to be true if it has not already. I only saw him once, and briefly after he left New York for Washington and have had no communication with or from him since then. Beatrice told me she had his address in England but it was too long to tell me over the telephone and she has not sent it.

I think Mexico must be something like Russia in attracting all kinds of “fuzzy” minded people, especially those of pink and red persuasion. The characters you des­cribe to me are certainly arresting. (By the way, what about the blond girl who was coming to New York?) Yes, there are plenty of “conservatives” but they are not fundamentally different from the extreme reds. They have no practical ideas or traditions of government as anything but rulership by force. Any idea of a public authority supplying community services by specific contractual arrangements with those who receive the services (as in a hotel) is as foreign to them as to the reds. Communism, with all its rhetoric about altruism etc., is thought to propose something fundamentally different from ordinary governmental coercion that is proving so disastrous, so it supplies a handy (and by supposed contrast, virtuous) fire for muddy-minded people to jump into as they realize the political pan is getting too hot. The stark fact is that all political government, however constituted or accepted, rests on nothing but coercive power, with or without the willing consent of those coming under it. Communism (including all totalitarian schemes) is its logical extreme — taxation 100 per cent. — Take it all and hand some back. That is why the conservatives have no really effective argument against the communists. Their basic philosophy is the same. Government must find a non-political, a non-coercive source of revenue before it can find any permanence or security for itself or for those who come under it.

Dearest Lucile, please do not think my negligent writing signifies any less interest in your doings, – welfare and affairs. Just let me quote the first few lines your letter of Feb. l4. “Did you ever put off a letter day by day because you had so much to say and so many things were happening to you and you had so many things to do and you were so tired and sleepy when you wanted to write the letter? Well, that’s my state and I’m so sorry.” That’s me all over, Mable. So, with lots of love, good bye.

Enclosures:

    Article recently prepared.

    Check $100.