To Bertha from Marie Schubert –
(Date is approximate)
September ?
The Somethingth
Bertha dear,
There’s no use waiting for a space of time sufficient for writing all I have to tell you. So, I’m going to make a start and let it grow. Twenty minutes now and perhaps plenty minutes later on.
Where did I leave off and where shall I begin? I suppose I told you of the book I illustrated, Mother Goose Rhymes, adapted for use in the primary grades of school and as a reader. I simply adored doing it. It is difficult to realize how very inspiring Mother Goose can be. One would think it had been done to death but it never will be – it can’t. I turned out cover and _______ piece in color and over 25 illustrations in a month (doing all my regular accounts besides and part of the time Mr. Pavies’ besides, which was going some even for a Speed Queen. I admit that it was) and somehow managed to do stuff I was willing to sign.
Catherine Melton arrived out her just at the hectic finish of the book and I dashed about with her quite amazingly considering everything else I had to do. We had one wonderful meal at Twilight at the Cliff House, a silver and hyacinth blue Twilight outside a dark hulk of a Tramp ¬-steamer disappearing out to sea, and inside, a very subdued honey-colored glow of light and a stringed orchestra playing Kashmiri songs. It was most entrancing.
I hardly dare plan anything but I feel that anything is possible if I mortify my flesh by labor-unceasing and fix my hopes and struggle for that something like a Demon. I feel that I have learned to struggle like that, and perhaps if I fixed on some huge glittering goal, it might be a pleasure to fight like that with a fierce abandon.
My twenty minutes are up. Santa Claus has my nose to the grind stone just now. Hales Department Store have me already drawing toys every spare moment.
(More later.)
Sunday AM, at office.
Such hopeless quantities of work to do. I want get finished anyway so may as well take ten minutes and scribble a PostScript to my disjointed letter.
I fear my friends cannot understand how very, very much they do mean to me. I am forced by circumstances to scramble so that it is difficult to settle down and collect my thoughts sufficiently for a real letter and by the time I get around to the letter writing, so much has happened that I can’t put it all on paper.
You know in the commercial game, you cannot say to a client, “I am too busy to do your orders this week.” You lose the account instantly if you are ever “too busy” for them. Each client things his orders should have precedence over all others and I am in a dilemma. I have to do Mr. Davies stuff. He gives me a corner in his office you know rent free and helped me get started which meant so much. His work is the most exacting and of course pays less. Hales would take all my time from now till after Easter but they would have none at all through summer Wermen’s account pays best of all but is occasional all year round and Harr Wagner the publisher pays very fitfully but the work is marvelous experience. There are other accounts which for one reason or another I want to handle.
So I keep wildly violently busy and thank the Good Lord that I get enough so I don’t have to worry about money at any rate – and dream of a more leisurely _____ _____ later when I have saved some not for a rainy but for a sunny day.
Write soon,
M.