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Max Perkins to Elizabeth Lemmon
1 (ALS, 3 pp.)
112 Rockview Avenue, Plainfield, N.J. April 14th 1922
Dear Miss Lemon:-
When I found these cigarettes you had left I thought at first to keep them as a rememberance. But I am far from needing a rememberance. I then recalled that you had said you meant to stop smoking because cigarettes of this brand were no longer made & I thought I must save you from that dreadful heart-broken feeling you have when you don't smoke, at times, if only for the brief space these two cigarettes would last. If you have stopped, I feel as I have felt. This brief reprieve will make you think of me with extraordinary gratitude.- Maybe thats too much to hope; but short of that, these cigarettes have given me a chance to say something too trivial to say without an excuse. It is, that I had just the faintest fear you might really think me so pusilanimous as to have been offended that you "could not bear the sight of me".- I guess not though.
* * *
Next year, please remembe[r] I sent these & thank me. And I now thank you for all the pleasure you gave me- &, I suppose, everyone else in the neighbourhood- by being here this year[.]
Sincerely yours Maxwell E. Perkins
I always greatly liked the phrase "dea incessu patuit." But I never really knew its meaning till I saw you coming toward me through our hall the other night.
2 (TLS, 2 pp., holograph postscript)
Charles Scribner's Sons Publishers Fifth Avenue at 48th Street New York May 3, 1922
Dear Miss Lemmon:
I am sending you this book which is one I happened to speak to you about, rather more in the idea that it may interest your mother than yourself. There is only one chapter in it, the 26th, that would seem particularly striking to anyone who did not somewhat remember the days of the war & reconstruction. But I thought that 26th chapter impressive.
Perhaps people do not like to look back on those days in the South, but in that case you will know how to treat the book.
I wouldn't send it anyway if I thought it was going to cause you the trouble of writing a note. If it is liked you can tell Louise so when she comes down, and let it go at that.
Sincerely yours, Maxwell E. Perkins
I'd be afraid to come myself with those Mountaineers about.
To Miss Elizabeth Lemmon
3 (ALS, 2 PP.)
Charles Scribner's Sons Publishers Fifth Avenue at 48th Street New York Oct. 7th 1922.
Dear Miss Lemmon:-
The early spring of 1922 seems a long, long time ago to me. But, then, you liked James Huneker, & perhaps still do, & so I'm sending you a copy of his "letters", just now published.- And this gives me the chance to say I'm sorry I called you to the `phone' so early when Louise went down to you. I forgot you went by standard time there;- but even so I was too early & I've had it on my conscience. Why did you send Louise to that fortune teller? She said, her husband was a nice, conventional sort of man but incapable of understanding her. And I had been keeping it a secret & getting away with the bluff.
4 (ALS, 2 pp.)
Charles Scribner's Sons Publishers Fifth Avenue at 48th Street New York Friday April 13th [1923]
Dear Elizabeth:-
I think you may like this book, though most Americans wouldn't. Any way, see it as the fulfillment of my desire to give palpable expression to my sense of obligation toward you for the pleasure you have given me. How absurd that you should have said `thank you' to me for taking you to lectures & all when you had simply enabled me to do what I would have implored you to let me do! I feel a sense of guilt for having so often kept you up so late, & I hope you will forgive it in the quiet of Virginia;- for I know it is quiet there normally, & you know that I would go nowhere with so much pleasure if it were possible to go anywhere.
Yours as ever Maxwell E. Perkins
5 (ALS, 5 pp.)
112 Rockview Avenue [Plainfield, N.J.] Tuesday June 3rd 1924
Your letter was a complete surprise to me & such a happy one. And if it had come ten days sooner you would have had me on your hands; for I passed within a few miles of Middleburg & considered appearing there, & in Richmond made inquires about how it could be done. I saw the Confederate flag flying at a place they call Battle Abbey; & the uniforms of all the Confederate generals; & a beautiful death mask of Stonewall Jackson- Such a fine delicate, intellectual face he had such as no picture gives any notion of; & better than all, the defenses of Richmond winding along the crest of a hill above the battle valley of the Chickahominy, marked by a line of lovely pines which were there even in `65 I suppose. They had not the ragged grandeur of our wind twisted pines in Vermont:- they went straight up to a great height before reaching the black-velvet of their tufted branches. They were calm & beautiful & far more vivid in my memory than anything else I saw,- & I saw much that was memorable. One of the men with me tried to start the war again, with me in the role of the Yankee army. But I wouldn't fight & he lapsed into sulky silense,- perhaps regarding me with contempt, which was the way I regarded him.
About your operation I did not know until sometime afterward, & not until Sunday night - when Mrs. Randall told me - that it had been serious; - & then it seemed too late to write. Tonsils came out so easily in my family that I had no idea they could give any such trouble:- at Windsor it seems to me they used to send a cousin or a brother up to Hanover every other week or so to have them out & he would be back in a day or so rather cross because he couldn't smoke &, in one case I recall, because he had gone under eather in pajamas & come out in a night shirt;- it seemed to him that a very mean & humiliating advantage had been taken of him.- But when Mrs. Randall told me about you will know without my saying it how sorry I was;- & how glad that you had got through with it. And if you should do as you say they prophesy, why who would care,- you would still be yourself. Nobody could ask more than that of you.
I did send the Ring Lardner's book but I thought you would probably not care much for it, & so, that it would not be fair to make you write a letter about it;- but Some Like Them Cold, Champion, & The Gothic [Golden] Honeymoon are splendid stories & as a baseball fan you might like several of the others. If Ring only would not drink! Louise & I went down there the other night just before she sailed, I on business. I had planned to announce upon arriving that I had no interest in drink of any sort & I knew his wife had none. But we were late & drinks were already prepared. No business was done that night. We would better not have gone at all. As for W L. Phelps-I call him Billy Helps because of his boosting proclivities-he's a most popular feature of the magazine & a collection of his last year's papers ran through two editions.- This, I know, you won't regard as an adequate defense.
I haven't spoken to an adult outside business since Louise sailed,- except last week at the reading club. Then I read those chapters from War & Peace which tell how little Petya, wild to be in a battle, joined the band of Partisans & stayed for the raid, & got himself killed by rioting directly against the French earthworks;- how he wanted to give his raisins & flints & everything he had to the officers, & killed the French drummer, & sat on the edge of the wagon in the night because if he once went to sleep it was `all up with him', & heard that dream music, & all. And when the reading was done May said it was "very dramatic"- Oh, I did see the Randall's & Dave is well but has lost in spirits;- but not Mrs Randall- she is as young & pretty & alert as ever she was.
If you should begin to write me again, ever, & decide not to go on with it, please don't throw the beginning away, but send me even that. In a certain sense it is my property. Do so regard it anyway.
As ever Maxwell E. Perkins
6 (ALS, 4 PP.)
[Grand Central Station, New York] August 5th 1924
`It's none of my business, of course', but your account of a transformation disturbs me. I'd been looking forward ever since she left Plainfield into the distance when I should once more see the Elizabeth I then saw; & I can imagine no substitute that would be even `just as good': Will the new Elizabeth lack that godesslike repose which was among the qualities that so distinguished her from all the others- eager, restless, striving women. And if she should I'd almost rather not see her, for to do so would be to impair the image of The Elizabeth who would otherwise, at least; survive in my memory. You make me still more regret that I did not risk the diversion for Richmond.- But I dreaded arriving in the midst of one of those Virginia parties where a block of New England granite would be only an obstacle;- Louise called me that last night because I didn't weep at a movie, The White Sister. But if I ever get into Virginia again I'll be able to walk to Middleburg: I've been reading Henderson's Jackson & know every road, stream & hill.
We went to a party last week Sunday night at Hayward Brown's, or rather Ruth Hale's,- a `beef-steak supper' they called it. There was also punch, to the bowl Ruth Hale, a thin, tense, narrow-faced little woman (`little, but O Lord!') led me, & filled me a glass (I guess it was a china cup); for, she said, `I long to see an Evarts drunk.' But I could not oblige her on that quantity of punch & anyway her purpose was malignant, for she then remarked, "I loathe all Evarts". So the encounter was not the opening of a love affair;- although aside from the question of beauty she had her attractions.
As she felt as she did about Evartses, & the party was far from the supper stage, & there were numerous sleek-headed but slinky jewesses weaving about who made you (at least me) feel nervous, I proposed a swim for myself in the lake where Hayward & others were reported to be. `Miss' Hale offered me her suit which was all too one-piece for me, & silk; or the upper part of a brother's suit which at least looked masculine, & she said, would do with a safety pin. But I was relieved to find Brown alone in the lake, up to his waist, fishing; & he had trained his fish well for he caught one while I was diving off the rock behind him. It is a charming Lake to look at in the clear, calm light that precedes sunset, with banks of thick foliage, some hemlocks & pines even, & lily pads & bright green bullrushes along the margins, but too warm for swimming. The whole place-this "estate" of 100 acres-has a deserted melancholy air,- a jungle of undergrowth, broken walls, ruinous orchards.- A fine theme for a Hergersheimer story. The house is sinking down to decay: `al[t]ho now through the plaster & plaster sprinkles the floors, & the kitchen chairs & tables it is furnished with are broken.- But someday all is to be more or less magnificent;- except Hayward, who fits it as it now is, I thought, as I followed his shambling figure along the grass grown road; half Dr. Johnson, half cinnamon bear in gait.
We ate the beefsteak on pieces of bread,- & the mosquitoes ate us. But Louise thought it a wonderful party, & you would have thought so, & I know I ought to think so, but I can't. I don't think a "brilliant" person is of value merely as a feature of the landscape, but only as they exhibit their brilliance;- & nobody did,- except Brock Pemberton on a piano.
I sat down to write you about the authoress I know who has been the victim of a ghost. She looks twenty years older on account of him. But you'd never get that far if I should go on to it now.
7 (ALS, 5 pp.)
Bar Harbor [Maine] Monday Sept. 22nd [1924]
Dear Elizabeth:
I've been here ten days & have climbed almost as many mountains;- which is not such an achievement as it sounds like, for not one is more than two thousand feet: you can gain the iron back of any one in forty minutes. But when you reach that wild waste of boulder strewn rock and look down at the ocean, or into a vale bristling with pointed pines; or across at the shaggy side of the next mountain, you seem to be vastly high & utterly alone,- if you are alone which I have sometimes contrived, at the risk of a reputation for sanity. Then you have a marvelous walk of a mile or so along the mountain ridge with a view in three directions,- a magnificent view too.
Continues...
Excerpted from As Ever Yours Copyright © 2003 by The Pennsylvania State University Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
