Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1807

Pencil notes for a letter to Marian Lewis, Winchester, Virginia.

Spring, 1958

 

 

 

Dear Marian:

     In my feelings, stunned by thoughts of your recent sorrowful misfortune, I have wondered for days how I might write you anything beyond fulfillment of a conventional obligation. For I have always known and admired you as one who could rise to much more than ordinary heights of enjoyment and I know this carries with it a capacity for deeper sorrow too.

     Some of us have enough of imagination to live in three worlds and with some measure of choice in them all as to what we shall accept and entertain — really live with. Some things are irreversible, yet there are always others to turn to. There is much to choose out of all the present, much that we can bring forward out of the past, and both these tell us of a fortune of which we know little but of which we can dream freely as we choose and in large measure make our dreams come true. Keeping ourselves ready for their fulfillment draws fulfillment to us as music seeks the well-tuned ear and beauty shuns the heart that has for her no welcome smile.

     Our powers are, for the most part, unrealized and potential. They must be sparked. (I know this only too well.) New occasions teach new duties, and I am sure you can arise to them, remembering with Whittier that, “All the good (the imperishable) the past hath had remains to make our own time glad.”

     I feel less call to hearten than to applaud, for I know that with your indomitable spirit you will carry on and build into the vast and ever dawning future day measures of love and beauty that but for you could never be.

Affectionately,

      S.H.