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Letters of Henry S. Whitehead, 1942

Page 4

women, and children. They include ships' surgeons in the passenger trade, some social lights, any number of nice little girls, college fellers, professors, artists, writing men, colored people, Jewish highbrows and lowbrows, Danes, Kalmucks, Finns, old Doc Parry who used to be Buffalo Bill's vet, Caruso's father-in-law, Robert Henri, Dick Culter, Wallace Goodrich, Dean of the Boston Conservatory of Music, the Archbishop of the British West Indies, a considerable group of broken-down old ladies, an enormous number of the insane (for I was, along with my Middletown rectorship, chaplain of the Connecticut State Insane Hospital) "working-girls", a few yeggs, a bunch of actors and actresses of all kinds including a bunch of the girls who used to be in the Hippodrome chorus and who used to come to me when I was a parson in N.Y. for advice, etc. --- all kinds of people. I love 'em all, and delight in their society.

My chief interests --- the things I like to do --- include certainly the following: being at sea; hunting small game with a good setter-dog; all kinds of athletic exercises. The good Lord gave me a lot of health and I've always thought it worth while to keep hold of it and use it. Amusing a lot of kids (as at a boy's camp, for instance) with stories and faking on a guitar while I sing a lot of junk to them. Having a couple of nice little girls cuddle up to me each side of a big sofa and carrying on a conversation with them, letting them do most of the talking.

Of course I like to write. I've written with a certain ideal in mind, I think, always. That is to turn out stuff that is not hackneyed, and that is worked out in good form. I am, at least partly, indebted to certain expressed ideals of Gouverneur Morris for that last. I like to write stories than are not only somewhat different form the usual types, but also to preserve a certain difference among those I manage to produce. I have written successfully in the essay form for a number of years. I find the carrying on of my professional duties comparatively easy, and I enjoy them very much.

I dislike cats, both kinds --- real cats and people who are cats rather than dogs. I am intensely disliked by both kinds of cats myself. I hate anything like false formality, although I like the European manners, customer, and the usual courtousness and precision which characterize Continental social relationships. Many of my friends are foreigners whom I have met abroad or here in the United States. I am a "Good American". But I feel that I love my land so much, deep down, that I ought to do my small bit to help in eradicating the national faults which constantly intrigue the attention of foreigners, even well-disposed foreigners. I dislike our crudities where these occur, though I invariably champion our cause with all the dialectic skill which I have tried to acquire in my two professional careers of political writer and clergyman.

As an example of something --- I'm not sure what --- perhaps the strange disparity between what we necessarily think of ourselves and "as others see us," I am appending extracts from a letter written by a Santa Cruz (Virgin Islands) official to a friend of his in the United States about me. This friend was a mutual friend, and handed me on the letter. He thought it would please me. It did, but I must admit, chiefly as a kind of curiosity. It is rarely, I suppose, that one has the experience of reading a letter like this about himself. If he gets such a change, it is commonly a look-in into some adverse opinion!

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women, and children. They include ships' surgeons in the passenger trade, some social lights, any number of nice little girls, college fellers, professors, artists, writing men, colored people, Jewish highbrows and lowbrows, Danes, Kalmucks, Finns, old Doc Parry who used to be Buffalo Bill's vet, Caruso's father-in-law, Robert Henri, Dick Culter, Wallace Goodrich, Dean of the Boston Conservatory of Music, the Archbishop of the British West Indies, a considerable group of broken-down old ladies, an enormous number of the insane (for I was, along with my Middletown rectorship, chaplain of the Connecticut State Insane Hospital) "working-girls", a few yeggs, a bunch of actors and actresses of all kinds including a bunch of the girls who used to be in the Hippodrome chorus and who used to come to me when I was a parson in N.Y. for advice, etc. --- all kinds of people. I love 'em all, and delight in their society. My chief interests --- the things I like to do --- include certainly the following: being at sea; hunting small game with a good setter-dog; all kinds of athletic exercises. The good Lord gave me a lot of health and I've always thought it worth while to keep hold of it and use it. Amusing a lot of kids (as at a boy's camp, for instance) with stories and faking on a guitar while I sing a lot of junk to them. Having a couple of nice little girls cuddle up to me each side of a big sofa and carrying on a conversation with them, letting them do most of the talking. Of course I like to write. I've written with a certain ideal in mind, I think, always. That is to turn out stuff that is not hackneyed, and that is worked out in good form. I am, at least partly, indebted to certain expressed ideals of Gouverneur Morris for that last. I like to write stories than are not only somewhat different form the usual types, but also to preserve a certain difference among those I manage to produce. I have written successfully in the essay form for a number of years. I find the carrying on of my professional duties comparatively easy, and I enjoy them very much. I dislike cats, both kinds --- real cats and people who are cats rather than dogs. I am intensely disliked by both kinds of cats myself. I hate anything like false formality, although I like the European manners, customer, and the usual courtousness and precision which characterize Continental social relationships. Many of my friends are foreigners whom I have met abroad or here in the United States. I am a "Good American". But I feel that I love my land so much, deep down, that I ought to do my small bit to help in eradicating the national faults which constantly intrigue the attention of foreigners, even well-disposed foreigners. I dislike our crudities where these occur, though I invariably champion our cause with all the dialectic skill which I have tried to acquire in my two professional careers of political writer and clergyman. As an example of something --- I'm not sure what --- perhaps the strange disparity between what we necessarily think of ourselves and "as others see us," I am appending extracts from a letter written by a Santa Cruz (Virgin Islands) official to a friend of his in the United States about me. This friend was a mutual friend, and handed me on the letter. He thought it would please me. It did, but I must admit, chiefly as a kind of curiosity. It is rarely, I suppose, that one has the experience of reading a letter like this about himself. If he gets such a change, it is commonly a look-in into some adverse opinion!