Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1796

Pencil notes by Heath for a letter

Fall or winter 1935?

 

 

Dear Inspiration  –

 

     How lovely it is, to have your sweet letter telling me that you enjoyed mine and setting aside all my fears that I might have written too warmly and unreservedly and brought upon you some possible stress or anxiety. I’ve had your letter several days and several times have set for myself a time to try to write for you thoughts worthy of all that you have been for me — all that you have inspired in me. But no mood is creative enough, no inspiration divine enough to clothe in language the realities that you have made me feel. You have been like sunlight, releasing vital and creative energies as the sun’s rays revivify the darkened earth and make it fruitful. Your liveliness /?/ seems to make all life beautiful and worthwhile, even to the _____________ that I would rather have them leave, if they came to me because of you. Do you remember the crude little scraps of notes I first sent you? I had written no personal letters then for a long time and it seemed that _____________________. But you, without knowing it, you made me and I think by now I’ve somewhat improved, in quality at any rate. And I’ve improved in many other respects. I do more work of every kind and get more pleasure out of it than before I knew you and I can feel my mind and spirit trying to be more fruitful in every way. O, I know I am incurably romantic but who would not be if that is what responds to a beautiful influence like yours? If only I had a facile pen to follow the flowing stream of my thoughts and your pictures of my daily rounds, my teaching, reading, attending discussions, practicing on the type machine (hoping to learn to write without being conscious of it) — if only I could reflect all these things to you and embellish them with lively comment and loveliest imaginings for you. If only my hand could race with memory and imagination what long letters I would write.

 

     Something you said about having ambitions, aspirations out of your class — working class. I wonder what you suppose your class to be. Do you not know that you are in the class of supreme workers — the artist creators — those who Create Beauty, the sublime creation for which all lesser creation is made and to which all the lesser must lead if it have any excuse for being. In the trans­cendent flow of life they are only few on whom falls the divine privilege to labor and suffer for the Ideal and the divine power and instinct to follow through. By every certain sign this chrism of beauty has fallen on you — the power to build beauty, to inspire the like power in others, and out of unremitting toil to build supremest values. Working class, forsooth! Did not even old Plato make plain that his men and women of gold and silver were the children of the men of iron and brass, and so exclude from his ideal republic all hereditary preferment?

 

     Last night I attended a formal dinner at Town Hall Club in honor of Eva Le Gallienne and her work for the theatre. She was honored by ____________ as the supreme working woman who was contributing to the enlargement and enrichment of the lives of millions of men and women. She, in turn, paid a tribute to Sybil Thorndike as not only a great artist but a great and beautiful personality. All of this made me think intensely of you, — of your luminous personality, your rare power to work and suffer for the joy of creating beauty, not alone for the elevation of your own spirit but also for the enlargement of millions of other lives. I know how you feel this urge and power within you and I know, too, when your spirit seems walled in and your bodily strength seems down how sometimes you wonder if after all you are not meant for the sheltered way and the common lot and daily rounds of the obscure and uninspired. In this mood you ponder the decision that is pressed upon you and you say you must make this year …