Katonah, September, 1920
TO THE EHLE,—Now this is a pleasure to have a minute's talk with you in the cool under an apple tree. You are gay, with Grouitches, and other festive creatures, while I am glum, gloomy and lugubrious. You know this is a novel experience for me to be in care of two nurses and a doctor, not to speak of a wife; but I am obedient, docile, humble, tractable, and otherwise dehumanized. The plan here is to follow my boy's statement of the modern prescription for women, "Catch 'em young; treat 'em rough; tell 'em nothing." Well, they don't catch me young, but otherwise the prescription is filled. They reduced me to weakness, dependence, and a sort of sour-mash, and now they say that on this foundation they will build me up. Tho' I am still to lose some weight, being only twenty-four pounds under my average for twenty years. I will emerge from this spot, if I emerge at all, a regular Apollo, and will do Russian dances for you on that lovely lawn under the mulberry tree. And what happy memories of that spot I do have, and they cluster about you, with your soft hand and your understanding eye and your sympathetic mouth. You don't mind my making love to you in this distant fashion do you? Well, this is a charming jail, but jail it is after all, for I can't flee, though all the leisure in the world were mine—and it irks an American eagle or eaglet.
Dear Anne has been improving here. She now is jolly, tho' it has been hot. Responsibility kills her, and I thrive on it.
I believe I will take that place we went to see on the Shepaug. Ryan, my friend, is to manage it. Well, we have a place of refuge, eh? where the wicked and the boring and the ununderstanding cannot pursue.
But oh! my dreams do not come true these days, the magic touch is lost, the Fairies have been hurt in their feelings, my Daemon has deserted, and instead of beauty and joy and power, sweet content and warm friendship, I am struggling merely to live—and to what end?
Please go into my room some morning early and look out to the gate, the cobwebs must be diamond-sprinkled on the circle at the doorway, the catalpa trees must stand like stiff, prim, proper, knickerbockered footmen, on either side of the hedge, the ground must rise in a very gradual swell and culminate in the rose- covered gate. Throw it a kiss for me—(I wonder if there could be any roses left?). All of it is a lovely bit of man's handiwork, and Mr. Eno should have been born poor so that his planning mind, conceiving things of beauty in regular and balanced form, could have been used by many.
Tell him I got his nice letter and will drop him a line one day.
With much love,
FRANK LANE
TO ISADORE B. DOCKWEILER
Washington, September 25, 1920