Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3043

Pencil draft for a letter to a person unidentified

No date

Original is missing.

The deepest emotions — and devotions — of men, as you know, are often expressed in pilgrimages and silences. How much more understandable it would be if my emotional reactions — at a distance — were more in the common or usual manner. In matters of deep feeling, as I know to my sorrow, intensity of emotion can block or paralyze action — a dull inertness, when the one essential catalyst is not present to activate and inspire. You have told me much of your own experience that was /revealing?/ as to actions, and I have understood, and so now I will write to you somewhat of my own. After well over thirty years of entirely one-sided efforts towards domestic ideals and some four years before I was free, I became intensely entangled with a “Dresden China” personality much my junior — a hopeless infatuation, largely sensual, with an Alice-in-Wonderland delicacy of spirit (as it seemed) and an artistic and literary if not highly intellectual type of mind. When she capitulated utterly, my physical passion for her became instantly sublimated into idealistic /cherishing?/ and tender respect for her supposed virginity. (This was December, 1934 and I was not free until January 1938.) I know enough, and sadly, about feminine frigidity but almost nothing about frustration and was dismayed when she almost refused to see me again. She disillusioned me in many respects, made almost a father confessor of me for her aid and advice but resisted steadfastly my romantic attempt. She was an inveterate student at Columbia and other universities as far away as McGill. During the war years she became infatuated with her married employer and lived and traveled with him. But nothing, it seemed, could weaken my thralldom to her, even though for a time I was mildly attracted by one other who physically resembled her. The years passed, fifteen of them; always as a friend, but hopefully, I traveled to distant cities where she studied, watched over her fortunes and welfare, but always alone. I well knew I was wasting myself. My mind rebelled, but I had no wish or will against it.

     When I took that wonderful and beautiful woman — you — to tea at von Mises, my mind almost shouted at me but, as at other times, my heart reasoned: How can I be ________ and ideal to another while this all unworthy thralldom lasts. I wished so many times I could be released from it by more contact and association with you — more of your charm of person and magnificent mind and also your physical beauty so obvious to all. But with you it seemed always touch-and-go. Not until you were near to graduation did it seem possible to be with you either often or long. And then when your great /crash?/ came, my outward reactions, as usual, and I became quite bewildered inside of my seeming coldness and calm. While you were leaving Philadelphia for convalescence in New York I had some vacation-time commitments that I had with a certain amount of reluctance undertaken some months before and had delayed doing anything about. When the time came to decide instantly my mind was too slow and dull and then, without aid of consultation, I failed of enough resolution to break these short. It seemed I could soon clear these up and regain you devotedly in New York and all would be well. During the anxious weeks that followed there was completed in me, after some fifteen years, an absolute change of heart. The old bond was gone and a vastly more worthy one took its place. Imagine my consternation since then at almost every turn of events – how I could divine no crisis in your last phone message to me and its suggestion of seeing me, without discussion of our “understanding,” or of the September date that was being looked forward to — and all that followed. I recall those things not to chide but only hoping to understand (and to be understood) better than I do even now. For the new preoccupation of my heart and mind remains unchanged — unchangeable — despite all that has occurred. Only too well do I know the hungers and needs of body and mind