LETTER: ALS to Walter Lippman.
DODGE, MABEL. (1879-1962). ALS. (“Mabel (twice) and M.D. (twice)”). 14pp. 4to. Provincetown, N.d. To Pulitzer Prize-winning writer WALTER LIPPMAN (1889-1974), famous for coining the term “stereotype” and the notion of a “cold war.”
Thursday
Oh Walter – I can’t stay angry with you ever – tho’ I am rather often feeling cross with you. Never at the bottom though because there’s a real sympathy between us, I think. Now Walter.. Please try to come to Vallombrosa . I enclose some notes about it. It’s the coolest loveliest place in Italy & it isn’t a “resort” – the Paradisino is too high for smart people. It is a white washed monastery building. Please. I am going to send you word what Provincetown is like & I wish you’d come there too. I’l [sic] send to Harvard Club – will they forward? Faithfully, Mabel
Provincetown. Wednesday
Alright Walter Lippmann, I’ll tell you about Vallombrosa. It’s high & cool & austere and when you’ve worked up thro’ the pine woods to the bald round spaces on the top of the mountains you can see for hundreds of miles - & you feel as tho’ you had reached the summit of the world. And the sun is the deepest yellow – very intense & yet the air is always cool from the continual movement in it. We’re on the ridge of the Apennines – to the west we look down over the heads of the pine trees to the tops of chesnuts – down to where roads like white ribbons begin to wind about the hills & down the Valley of the Arno. One sees the river almost all the way -- down past Florence – winding west to Pisa, past the white headed Carrara mountains. The sun shining on window panes shows Florence which otherwise we can’t see because it is Unamopatria with the land. The roads wind & the river winds nothing goes direct. There’s an old saying that Tuscans don’t like a straight line. South we look towards Umbria – dotted all over with Etruscan stuff. They came out of Egypt & were the first Latin gypsies. Lots of Medieval castles all thro’ here. Northeast we – you & I and those two boys John & Boyce are going to walk over the tops of mountains without descending – into Romagna to the Republic of San Marino… completely independent with a population of two or three thousand – a standing army & its own stamp. It never submitted. It’s within sight of Rimini & near Ravenna where the Emperor Theodoric left such mosaics as nothing else can equal ever… They’re the finest things in Italy & the freshest. It’l [sic] take us inside of a week to walk there & we’l [sic] sleep in villages & wear out the soles of our shoes… & there won’t be any dalliances about it either... Nor will you be bullying & domineering by that time. Italy is so enchanting to walk around in – not like Switzerland with its tiresome protestant scenery -- & mean hotelkeepers with ingrowing Swiss faces. It is still pagan in the mountains & pastoral in the mountain meadowlands, & shephards [sic] & sheep—bread & cheese & wine have that most luxurious quality – inevitability! I tell you all this to discourage you because you’re so conventional, it’s the only way to get you to come. I enclose a letter from Lee S.[imonson] for you to read & return… The last advertisement I had in the paper said something to the effect that most any Wednesday night Lincoln Steffens & you talked about “good government”! I must send this to you. I congratulate you on the position of your bungalow which makes it unnecessary for you to have to go to Norway. Yrs, M.D. P.S. Of course if you don’t like to walk, you can sit in the woods all day & look at the view there too.
[side of page] Have you a flannel shirt? Wednesday [1913]– It is not Walthamesque [?] at Vallomrosa. It is far more grim & serine than you imagine and tho’ it is high & cool & austere – it takes a phenix [?] to stand & understand its sun. But all that you will learn on the spot. Your time for coming is right. We land the end of July & I have to leave the others & go to Paris on some work of my own -- & if you are coming from England to Italy we can come down together -- let me know something about your plans. Mrs. Pearsen [sic] wrote that so-called interview. It wasn’t one at all. She just quoted verbatim from a letter I wrote her in answer to a questions of hers. I know what you mean about Siminson’s [?] letter; but that’s the trouble always when people fall from the high level of undifferentiated human nature. (Whatever that means.) I wish somebody could get Bobby Rogers a job. You’d feel so more than ever if you read his “Pegasus of Kleon [?] … Fat” – which he sent me yesterday. Perhaps you have read it. Anyway it tells a lot. The feeling & thought in it are more sympathetic than the farm which is played out & reminiscent – (You know classical stuff – “Wine – dark ships – etc. etc. -----) but the content reveals Bobby & the very pure uncompromising manner of his thinking -- & his taste & fastidious-ness – his “it’s not good enough” attitude towards all halfway things. But that’s where finding him a job which will be his inevitable job is so hard. Because it is he that counts – not what he will do – or even say. Maeterlinck’s “Joyzelle” says – trying to explain this: “Ce n’est pas es qu’il fait – es n’est pas a qu’il dit – c’est lui – lui – lui. There must be some place in the world where Bobby’s personality as an end in itself should be all his reason for being… What have you thought of for him? I suppose you are disagreeing with all I am writing. Reed wired me that he had an exciting & important interview with [William Jennings] Bryan Sunday - & with [Woodrow] Wilson yesterday but couldn’t say more – He arrives on the boat today – do you want to hear about it? John – my kid -- & I went over & slept across the dunes in the wild outside shore last night & as we went to sleep as soon as it got dark we woke up as soon as it got light. The sun looked pretty high up to me. The carriage was to come for us at 9 -- & so we cooked coffee & eggs & bacon & ate it -- & took a bath & took a walk & expected the horse every minute… then we sat for hours on the top of the dune watching for it… finally the sun was so high I was certain they’d forgotten us – so I left him & started off across the dunes to the town. I walked miles in the sand. Finally I came to a road & sat down. An old man came along & said “Tuckered out?” I asked him what time it was & he said quarter past 8! I suppose it’d [?] been up for hours & hours. Oh Walter, John [Evans, her son, born in 1902?] got the “Garrison Prize” for literature at school & had his name put up on the immortality board for writing a composition called Lost in the Plains. He also got a prize for drawing but he’s the only lower farm boy who ever got the literature one.
Provincetown
Wednesday
Walter if you saw Bobby Rogers – Dave Carb & me sit down to supper in the kitchen at the table with the red table cloth, & the blue & white cape cod crockery, you would know then why I want you to come. I want to see how you’d look doing it. A kerosene lamp hangs over the table smoking a good deal, & there aren’t enough spoons, but the fish that we catch make good eating. B[obby] R[ogers] has more […] & flavor than anyone I’ve met for a long time. I believe he’s what they call “a character”. Carb read me his play which I like because it all felt & because it is like a dance. It is pure gesture -- & suggests summer lightening with distant thunder. And it is very knowing. “It is mad” snaps Bobby Rogers. “Pooh! So is life” I return – “I have not found it so” replies Bobby loftily! Can’t you hear him? Fred Boyd is being secretary to Reed. That is he arrives when he thinks of it & types for a little while every day. He has carried $83.00 in silver to the bank which Jessie Ashley has given him to skip his bail with, when his case comes up. Then he will remove himself to England, become a Member of Parliament -- & the Empire will fall! Reed trusts [?] it – “We have at last persuaded Boyd not to sacrifice himself. The Labor Movement has thrown him out – why should he die--?” Does one’s attitude towards Labor vary with the treatment one receives? So this is honor!!! Dear Walter – I want to go walking with you. You drive so fast that you never see the things you miss along the road. I’d like to see you dusty… & thirsty. But I guess you’l [sic] never walk till you get tipped out of your machine. So please come to Provincetown. Yrs – Mabel –
Provincetown
Sunday
Dear Walter. So many publishers don’t know!—Reed’s (Appleton’s) said the other day they couldn’t include a certain story for the end of his Mexican book “because it ends on a depressing note”—“What would you people have done with the […] of “Peer Gynt” if it had been brought to you?” – asked R – “Peer Gynt? What’s Peer Gynt?” asked the creature! It seems to me that theres the place for the critic to do constructive work – Selecting & publishing why wouldn’t that be a fine job for Bobby Rogers? He & a good business man could make it worth while for some one or a company to in-vest capital in such an undertaking. The ones who make beautiful books don’t seem to know anything about writing & vice versa. Kennerley is rather intelligent but unsatisfactory – vacillating & uncertain – besides missing much good stuff. Can’t you manage to make B.R. a publisher? Surely the “Republic” should have a publishing bureau connected with it. Bobby is coming back here on Wednesday. He writes you are going thro’ Boston the 27. Come down here – if only for a few hours – he said you probably will & Reed wants to see you – Yrs. M.D.
Dodge started corresponding with Lippman, according to his papers at Yale, in 1910.
Dodge and John Reed became lovers in 1913, traveling to Florence then returning to New York City where they lived together openly. In 1914, they spent time in Provincetown, Florence and Paris, the latter while Reed covered World War I. By the end of 1915 their relationship had ended.
In June 1913, the “interview” with Mrs. Pearson was printed in Movers & Shakers and entitled “‘The Printed Page Will Soon Be Superseded by the Spoken Word’ Declares Mrs. Mabel Dodge, Who Has Been Holding a New York ‘Salon’ for Free Speech.”
Reed’s Mexican book was Insurgent Mexico published by Appleton’s in 1914.
Reed famously traveled to the Deep South to interview William Jennings Bryan in 1916.
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