Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1789

Penned notes for a letter to Beryla Gorham.

Early 1930s

Dear B

     Once again I realize that you have been blessedly beautiful to me in so many ways — even more than to anyone else, in some ways. And this not just in my imagination of you but in actual fact. All the things that happen must pass but it is the inner and underlying spirit that causes things to happen as they do happen, and the spirit that gives birth to beautiful things and occasions can never die; at least it need not die — probably will not, even though we try to crush it.

    In “The Poet and the Woman,” the woman realized with tragic poignancy that what had been realized would never be again. She failed to realize that the spirit that made the occasion pure, beautiful and glorious was the only abiding reality in it all, and that this spiritual reality, being recognized, valued and cherished in the heart, can be the source of endless forms of beauty in the myriad events and occasions that come to pass — and must pass away. What we have said with sincerity, what we have done in unselfishness — what sweet communications have passed between us — these things we cannot hope to hold. But that in them which made them beautiful can still build beauty for us in all that comes to be.

    Could the few blessed moments when we bask in the presence of beauty, in the acknowledgment of a pure and beautiful relationship, without the strains and repressions of hidden fears — could these few moments be captured and frozen into still life in the great “set” of life’s search for outward beauty to match the dreaming beauty within, then must the whole drama cease and its unfolding spirit die. It is in the life of the spirit going on — going on within the fabric of the days and hours — that the being is nourished and inspired. Let us trust the “inner beauty” that it will answer to our earnest call. With all that is “kind and pure and gentle” /Missing words? check original/  Let us be “gay, fearless and daring” that the high moments not pass us by. Let us live even “dangerously” lest our souls at last shrivel and perish from the very fear of life. For, in the words of Olive Schreiner, “there is nothing worth living for but love and tenderness between human beings; …it is the whole of life.”

/After some missing pages, there follows in penciled notes:/

     … in life calls you to this, but the creative artist in you hears a distant music and dim lights tremble on the horizon of your dreams. You have been touched by the spirit of the Ideal; dim lights and distant music you must follow, for even if you renounce them you cannot break their spell and they must haunt you all your days. From those who have the creative fire and are steadfast and loyal to their ideals love does not forever fly but comes to them exalted in strange, free ways that only the wise and the elect can understand.

     If I seem to plead it is only for the unfoldment of what is rare and beautiful in you. For myself, I can ask nothing for I can offer nothing. Yet there is a strange wild joy in the thought that I might be to you just the added inspiration that you need to keep your eyes on the stars when your feet are weary on the ground. — That I might make some measure of return for the inspiration you’ve been and are to me, making it again good to be alive, to do things and find a kind of satisfaction even in honorable failure where the effort was inspired by you. I wonder if without half realizing it we may not each lift the other to powers and capacities we never felt before. I am doing things almost daily now that I know I had not done or had done less well but for you. It is as though someone in a moral or spiritual sense has “found me.” I like to feel that in the same sense someone already has found you and to hope that I may help someone to “find you” also in the sense that you mean.

     Of course I keep trying to say lovely things to you but absence, such long, uncertain absence makes the heart grow fainter; it cannot make it grow any fonder. Do you have to stay away until September, even if all your strength should come back before then? That old dread keeps returning sometimes to me — the dread I felt when I was leaving New York that time. Could it be that you say New York now in the same way that you said California so many times?

     My classes at the Henry George School are going on nicely. I enjoy them and it seems that they will lead to other things. I have already two “fan letters” that suggest I have greater future usefulness. I have developed some very wonder-stirring conceptions along sociological lines and am getting some hearing for them and much promise of acceptance for them at the School and also with Dr. E.D.M. and some of his students at N.Y.U. Someone who can do justice to these ideas is going to have a vast following — some day. I have prepared about twenty topics for discussion and the Master Institute here (Mrs. Horch, Director) is arranging a Sunday Evening Course for me beginning in November. I’ll send you the circular as soon as it’s ready.

     I’ve not seen any plays. There was one I wanted to see, but not alone, and there was no one I wanted to ask. I go to discussion groups at Riverside, some philosophy classes at N.Y.U. and the Humanist Society and manage to get in a full evening of dancing about every week. Two cousins who dance together have been giving me plenty of practice, especially since Edith has been laid up with an infected foot. But how something (or Someone) has increased my desire for women’s company yet almost spoiled all my pleasure in it. I must have it now. Just to be an hour in the same place with you even when sharing you with others is more refreshment of spirit to me than I can describe.

     Yes, I use the Library a little and see Mrs. Evans there sometimes, but an elderly Mrs. Mason is looking after it most days. The books are being kept in order as you left them. I told Mrs. H. and Mr. L. you will be glad to work anywhere when you return. Yes I suppose my apartment is one of the best. It’s directly over the west entrance, ninth floor, and is larger and better furnished than the other. I wish you could see it and much more and that I too might have a “Ghost /?/ Island” and all that sometime.

    Yes I observe the difference in the two parts of your letter. Did something change your mood between?

     0, Beryla, can it be that your spirit is one that can take on the trammels of the commonplace? Is it your creativeness to bring more people into the world, obscurely, as millions of other women do? Is it not the higher creativeness of the artist who advances and enriches the life of his day and age and even of generations to come? Only you can at last answer this, but all your hopes and dreams of what you may do and be are shared by me.*

 

*It was well that the Woman Chose Freedom for then would Life return bearing both gifts in one hand. And so it was with Olive Schreiner.