Spencer Heath's
Series
Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1453
Carbon of letter from Heath at 11 Waverly Place, New York 3, NY to Mrs. Louis Blume, 206 East Livingston Street, Orlando, Florida
December 1, 1948
Dear Mrs. Blume:
How kind you have been to keep in a one-sided communication with me all this time. When I went out tonight, I said I was coming back in time to call you on the telephone and try to make up for it all by a nice talk with you and to thank you for all your kind words about my apple doggerel and other things. But I did not get back here until a little after midnight so I am thinking after all I better just take my type in hand and write even if only a few lines before I call it another day of dallying.
No, I didn’t take quite all night. I started about 7:50 and for half an hour or more I couldn’t do a thing, not even a line. So I lay down and slept for an hour or so and then started all over again, no, not again but to be gin, and then I didn’t get up from the table until all fourteen “quatrains” were finished almost as I copied them next day. It did take some hours but I was glad you put it up to me with a deadline so I would have to do it and then feel the better for it, but I am ready to admit that the time might have been spent in a worthier and less doggerelish cause.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that you did not receive my token as arranged for on the morning of the thirtieth September. I intend to write to the “House of Flowers” on North Street, Pittsfield and suggest that they make some proper amends for their omission. It seems to me their non-feasance was egregious in the extreme. You are very gracious in your whimsical fancy of ills possibly averted by it.
Also, I cannot say how kind you have been in getting my manuscript from Mr. Granberry, with all the comings and goings, hazards of wild beasts etc. When you have finished looking at it again (as you said you might wish to do), I shall be delighted to have you send it on to me at my above address in New York. And still more delighted if you still have the goodness of heart to enclose it in that lovely traveling case you have told me about and the like of which I really do need. Isn’t it grand either to give or to get a present when it is just the right thing. I should say that a valuation of fifty dollars each or a hundred in all should be about right for the manuscript and case. I hope you have underestimated Mr. Granberry as an intelligent critic. I know that literary form is his first consideration, but he impressed me as having a bit of flair for substance as well. But, of course he will have to be exceptional if he entertains any point of view other than its suitability for mass circulation.
I got the impression from friends in Winter Park that John Martin besides being a person-of-age was also a personage. If he is an authority on International Law, I hope his authority is of a different kind from that of International Law itself — in the days when there was any such law, meaning before World War I. Neither before nor after Grotius did it ever have any authority but that of diplomacy fronting for the sword. The real laws, the laws of nature, are the ones that need neither enactment nor enforcement, but whose sanctions are inviolate. There are no laws of sovereignty any more than there are laws of slavery or of war — slavery being the obverse of sovereignty and always, in some form, its prerogative. Nature makes the only laws that can be carried out without catastrophe.
Here I am on a second page. Mr. Martin probably would brand me an anarchist unless I acknowledge the authority of “laws” that work nothing but ill instead of the authority of nature whose laws need only to be known and understood to be followed and work never aught of ill.
Many thanks for your lesson from the case of Mr. Martin. It is good to think of another decade or so, provided only that one can make some good advantage of it, as I hope to do despite the disorder and distraction of my ways. My health check-up seems to be all favorable, so far as I know, but I have not seen the photo- and other graphs. I certainly am pleased to know that your health is so fine.
No, I have not exactly loitered on what I was writing when with you. I re-wrote it very much longer. Then in Maryland I wrote it all over again and now I am writing it a third time. I also have three lovely charts and diagrams, two of which I made in Maryland and my ex-son-in-law inked in beautifully for me.
Yes, the five, rather six, of us had a very nice Thanksgiving at Andover. The sixth was a college mate of the grandson at Harvard. We went over to Cambridge next day and spent the afternoon with them. Lucile’s boy Crawford from Princeton was very much pleased that I let him drive the car about two thirds of the time — more, he said, than he had ever done before all put together.
There is indeed a better way of communication than writing, such as the telephone, but it has its drawbacks. The best of all is by personal visit, as I know very well by experience, both recent and remote.
Please forgive me my many sins of omission, not because they are few or small but because your charity is so wide.
Sincerely,
Metadata
Title | Correspondence - 1453 - International Law |
Collection Name | Spencer Heath Archive |
Series | Correspondence |
Box number | 10:1336-1499 |
Document number | 1453 |
Date / Year | 1948-12-01 |
Authors / Creators / Correspondents | Mrs. Louis Blume |
Description | Carbon of letter from Heath at 11 Waverly Place, New York 3, NY to Mrs. Louis Blume, 206 East Livingston Street, Orlando, Florida |
Keywords | Law Martin |