Wednesday, November 25, 2009

1930, March 6: HMK to Rena Harrell- A Thank You

My dear Miss Harrell;

It is so difficult for me to find adequate words to express my gratitude for the beautiful things you have said about my little story and if it has brought so much enjoyment to you and to your friends, then my reward is already greater than I deserve.

Some years ago in Colombo in Penang I came in my wanderings upon a little Chinese temple whose altars were gay with little garments of colored paper and my priestly guide told me that it was a shrine for childless women. It was there that “The Smile of Buddha” was born.

You are right in your belief in the utter purity and devoutness of both my Chinese children and the absolute conviction of the little bride that what occurred was a miracle on the part of her divinity in answer to her prayers.

That you should have read my intent so clearly and that you should have found my method of expressing it worthy of such high praise is encouragement that is as priceless to me as it is unexpected.

I shall write now with even greater hope and try to live up to your expectations and I thank you and your friends on the faculty of Queen’s College, very, very deeply indeed.

I should like more than I can say to see a copy of the “Sceptre,” and do you know that Mr. Payne, the editor of The Review, is going to publish your letter to him?

Thanks again for your great kindness for as I said before it gives me new hope in a field in which I am as yet only a novice.

Yours gratefully,
HMK Smith

26 Greenwich Avenue
New York City.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

1930, April 17: HMK to RH- Illness

Thursday, April 17, 1930

My dear Miss Harrell;

This is just a line to thank you for your lovely letter which deserves the long answer it will receive a little later. I have had with my other burdens the most ungodly attack of grippe which has left me a little like a young calf as far as legs are concerned but I am being carted off to Cape Cod this afternoon for a week and the sea will set me up again. It helped to know that where you were there were cherry trees and dogwood and daffodils. I went to the flower show here just before I was imprisoned and I thought that all godless folk should be forced to go and see it too. There were millions of roses and no one but an utter fool could see so much beauty and not know that it was planned by and came from some source call it God or Buddha or Tao as you will that must have all the other attributes of beauty too – love and justice and mercy and immortality as well.

Your letter as published in the April Review was another thing that made life quite another thing than a succession of ice packs and a fight for breath and I am grateful to them for having published it and far more so to you for having written it. It was a tremendous compliment and a great encouragement. When I am well enough I hope you will let me send you a token of my appreciation. It will be something Chinese that I hope will always recall to you The Smile of Buddha.

Yours very sincerely,
HMK Smith

Sunday, November 22, 2009

1930, June 2nd: HMK to RH- Silver Lotus

Monday, June 2nd, 1930

My dear Miss Harrell;

If forgiving is divine, then it is you who must take on divinity and forgive me both for not having answered your letter of the last of April and finding nothing in it for me to forgive as you have asked me to do in your letter from Black Mountain.

After living for fifteen years in the most comfortable disorder of an old house I have but recently removed to an apartment in the tiny little cottage of which I enclose you a picture. I hated to leave the old place with its associations and memories of friends, some of whom have taken the long, long journey but, like a comfortable old coat, the place had served its purpose and my wise doctors said I must no longer climb three flights of stairs that took me to my rooms. So here I am so belittled and modernized, so overwhelmed with service and flunkeys and so delightfully comfortable that I am torn between awe of these gentlemen in uniform and regret for my shabby elegance of other days although my glass enclosed shower is a frightful temptation to indulge in its continued luxury and forget forever the length of time it took to get a foot of reasonably warm water into the old tub.

My old things, mostly from the Cape, fit nicely into their new surroundings and seem all ready to have become a part of them. The walls of my living room are a warm apricot—my rug amethyst, my slip covers apple green and my glazed chintzes pale yellow wit all the other colors in it. But perhaps when you come to New York you will come and see it, and, incidentally – me - and that will be a great shock to you I’m sure.

Last week and again today I have been one of the judges with several snobbish and too wise ones from Vogue, Harpers, etc. at an art school passing on costume and design and refusing to agree with any of them from which I get a tremendous kick. Next Monday I talk to the graduating class of another art school on “Color,” a subject by the way, that holds for me the deepest interest. My newest child—“Silver Lotus,” is in the hands of the editor of the N.A. Review. Herschel Brickell liked it perhaps better than the first one but I can not say that I do though I feel very tenderly for poor little Silver Lotus. If they take it then I shall send you something that she gave me long ago in Japan, so you must wait until I know. I should like to borrow your book, and return it with my thanks for your kindness and the Chinese stories which I knew that I shall love.

Yours faithfully,
HMK Smith

Sunday, November 15, 2009

1930, June 18th: HMK to RH - A Gift

June 18, 1930.

My dear Miss Harrell,

Thanks for the book which in spite of an endorsement by Mr. Daniels does in the brief glance I have been able to give it, disclose some of the charms which you said that it had for you. I knew several just such ladies as are described so vividly in one chapter, some even more interesting about which I may write later myself. Thanks again.

I know you will be honestly glad for me when you hear that the [North American] Review has bought my "Silver Lotus" and that it will appear in the August issue. And to celebrate that and as a tiny token of my appreciation of your encouragement I am sending you something that I have treasured for many years. It is a tiny "sake" cup given me in Japan by a "Hangyoku," a child dancer in a geisha house who is the heroine of my story although it is not of course the real story of her life. It was in the New Year season and she drank my health from it and I have used it since as a very private ash tray. I hope you will like it and that you will accept it from "Silver Lotus."

Yours faithfully,
HMK Smith

Friday, November 13, 2009

1930, July 13: HMK to RH - Cape Cod, Books, and Politics

217 Main Street
Kingston, Mass

Sunday, July 13th, 1930


My dear Miss Harrell,

     Your kindness in sending me this extremely interesting photograph of yourself surely deserved a far prompter acknowledgment than this belated one and I have no excuse to plead except that I came on to Cape Cod almost the next day and I have just been imbibing the beauty of this lovely country ever since.  There are acres of pink rambler roses, delphinium, Madonna Lilies, and trees that have stood here since before the Revolution and snowy white Cape Cod cottages with green shutters and picket fence enclosures.  And now that I have imbibed nothing but sea air and such beauty I can get down to work again.  Your picture was doubly interesting for you are not the least what I pictured you to be and I am very grateful to you for the great compliment you pay me in sending it.  I too am probably nothing like what you may have imagined the author of "Buddha" to be so perhaps it is just as well that you do not know for it is much nicer I am sure - not to exchange a thousand charming possibilities for one grim fact. 

I read your book and it has flashes of real beauty but it is so clogged with smug self-righteous propaganda and so full of palpable falsehoods that it exasperated me beyond words.  Having been connected with the government under no less a person than the now President, I know with what fodder a too gullible andromantic people were fed and if you have read the Post articles on war propaganda written by the head of the British Intelligence Department, you know that all that stuff was not in a single instance based on fact.  As a matter of fact I have been tempted to write a story on what that very kind of lying has done to people who accepted it in good faith and went about preaching it as gospel truth and then woke up that they had been betrayed into becoming the super liars of the universe.  Never again for me.  And now I have asked the Review to send you a copy of the August issue with "Silver Lotus."  I hope you will like her and that you will feel with me that her sacrifice was not in vain.  Do let me know as soon as you have read it for I shall be holding my breath for your opinion.  A friend of mine, a very famous old actress past 70, tells me that I must go on with the man-child born to the girl in "The Smile of the Buddha" for she insists that the child of such an almost immaculate union was destined for great things.  Perhaps I shall.  Do write me when you can.  Your letters are more than fascinating.

Faithfully,
     HMK Smith

Thursday, November 12, 2009

1930, July 19: HMK to RH - Errors in Silver Lotus Publishing

Saturday July 19th, 1930

My dear Miss Harrell;

     The advance copies of the August Review have come to hand and I am exasperated beyond words.  I asked them to send me an author's proof but they said that they had discontinued that practice as unnecessary.  They then proceeded not only to cut the story which is, of course, their privilege but also to leave out some  words and substitute others which change the story into something crude and careless.

     Do not, I beg of you, read it, if they have not as yet sent you your copy, but wait until I can send you the original manuscript which will reach me Monday.  I should not like you, of all people, to see it as it is and think that I had submitted it like that.  Then you may read it and see what they have done to it.  The most unforgivable thing was the substitution of the "with" for the word "for," so making of what was a beautiful picture of my little "Silver Lotus" doing the exquisite ancient dances of her calling into a bawdy scene of a kind familiar only in the brothels of the Occident.  Even in this jazz crazed age, the Japanese do not dance with each other and these old dances are still  done in the Yoshiwara, not with men, but for them.

     You will note the absence of important predispositions, etc. and they put in the word "able" in connection with the white Iris, for no reason that I can discover.  So on this lovely morning I am in a temper that is not nice to see or to think of but I am sure you will know what one feels when a child of the mind is thus mutilated.

    Thank you for being patient with me.  
Faithfully,
HMK Smith

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

1930, July 23: HMK to RH - Reply to Telegram Re: Silver Lotus

Wednesday, July 23rd, 1930

My dear Miss Harrell,

     Your telegram sent to New York has reached me here and I am very happy that you like my poor little Silver Lotus and that she has touched your heart.  Tears are a great tribute and to thank you, I sent you the original manuscript, penciled and edited as it is.  It is uncut and unpolished by alien hands and just as I wrote it.  Keep it and let me know what you think it gained by the cuts they made in it.  The verses are mine, written long ago and once set to music.  I await your letter and with my thanks for it and your generous kindness, I am
Yours faithfully,
HMK Smith




Sunday, November 08, 2009

1930, c. Sept 4: HMK to RH - Banter, "Daughter of Samurai" Denial

Thursday.

My dear R.C.H.

     Thanks for the lovely little verse and how wise of you to find a far lovelier sermon in the moon-flowers than in the musty words  of half-forgotten creeds.  Thanks too for the long letter which must have taken much of your time when you could not spare it.  But I am sorry to disappoint you.  I did not write "The Daughter of the Samurai," nor have I read it.  Tell me who did write it and where I may find it for since you have paid it so high a compliment, and me a greater one in thinking it was mine, I must read it post-haste.  Your letter makes my curiosity a burning one since you were so sure the story was mine.  If only a line, let me know where I may find it.
     I don't know if I can forgive you for asking the head of the Salvation Army in Japan about my "Silver Lotus" and her sisters of the dusk.  Nor the missionary either.  How could you expect them to say or to believe anything else with their effrontery in trying to force a God upon a race who have the decency with a few others to admit that they know nothing of what God is like or what he disposes.  The more I read of the philosophy of the East, the more I know how infinitely wiser they are than the cocksure West who know all about God  and even tell him what to do.  Aside from that, my story was written in a time, thank God, when there were no Salvation Army workers nor any missionaries in Japan nor had the virtues of the Occident come in to poison the minds and morals of a simple race.  That what they say of the Orient and the geisha of today is true, I will not question, but with the examle of commercialism that we have set them, who can blame them if they think that we are right.  You see, I have known so much of my life that the thing your missionaries call virtue is only a relative thing.  Perhaps you have read The Wind Bloweth by Donn Byrne.  If not, do read it and ponder the Scandinavian lady who was a member of the sorry sisterhood in the Argentine.  What I mean is that I have known of that class who had souls so virginal, so right, so strong, so free, so generous, that one wonders.  And that's that.

     What is your friend Dr. Wilson thinking of when beauty has become the new cult of our splendid nation along with miniature golf.  No beauty or art in industry.  Why, there is nothing else and if you will show him "The Ladies Home Journal," and the "Saturday Evening Post," I am sure he must be convinced that industry here thinks and acts only in terms of beauty.  I am glad you have got a Lapis Lazuli chain.  It is a jewel of great virtue, will protect your eyes, calm your manner and........ [Page missing - END POST] 


 

Saturday, November 07, 2009

1930, Sept 26: HMK to RH - Literary Analysis of "Daughter of the Samurai"

Friday Morning, September 26, 1930


My dear R.C.H.,

     Last night quite by the sheerest accident I picked up a copy of the Journal  in the house where I am staying and there I found your "Daughter of the Samurai."  Before I saw the title  I was appalled by the incredible illustrations and I knew instantly that Davgar,  whoever he or she may be, must have only the most  superficial knowledge of Japan else such ghastly pictures would never have been permitted to detract from the written descriptions as they do.  The story has flashes of real beauty but I am glad I did not write it and I am sure if you will take the time to read it slowly and in a quiet hour you will see how it could never have been mine.  It has been padded to interminable length and is full of inconsistencies and contradictions and by now you will be thinking that I am committing one of those sins of the mind of which I wrote you only yesterday.  It is not envy nor unkindness, it is only sadness that a thing that could have been quite perfect should not be so.
You must know that I could never have permitted a picture of so insipid a heroine, so Occidental a hero.  That I could not have so overworked the word "honorable" nor that I could ever have called this fragile tragic child anything so banal as Mistress Cherry Blossom nor could I have allowed her to say anything so Victorian as "I think I have a headache."  I could not have given my villain the name of a servant nor the nightwatchman the name of one of the oldest and most aristocratic families in Japan.  And the ten cents, which you thought wrong, is undoubtedly right for it equals the wage of a coolie even though it is not more than ten cents.  But to give a servant ten yen or five dollars would be unheard of I think, even in this day.  Nor would I have put in one paragraph the age old custom of blackening the teeth with "ohaguro" which has long since ceased to be a custom and in the next a Woolworth spotlight, telegraphs and trains.  I could not have had the mama-san come at night to do a lady's hair knowing what trouble that intricate style causes even to sleeping with the neck in a curved wooden block to preserve it  and that this part of the toilette is performed always in the morning?  I could not have left Ito and Yamato in an open field  as in the fifth part, drinking tea and looking at the floor.  I could not have put a secret wall safe in a Japanese house - not done.  What Davgar has done over and over with a kind of Midwestern insistence, and called one of those darkly mysterious and fascinating Japanese shops, a store.  I could not have compared the slightly curved graceful scabbard of the Samurai sword to snake prepared to strike.  I could not, in one place, have called Ito "an old man with many bags of gold" and in part six have made him as young as the hero when Ito remembers that Okada went away when he himself was but a youth.  I could not, in fact, have made these men who are Samurai do the many things that a true Samurai would have died rather than to perform.  And to mix the ancient Samurai into modern Japan, with its flashlights and express trains, which came long after the Samurai, as such, ceased to be, is only a sort of sacrilege to me.  No, I am afraid that Davgar has read much of Japan and loved it very little and I shall try and find out who this Davgar is.  There are passages in the story so  like the things that I might have written that it is uncanny and you will be surprised when you know that "Lilies of Jade," which I finished when I wrote you early in September and which has now been with my agent for two weeks, has to do with the sacred rite of Seppuku - which is Chinese and not Japanese originally.  I can see why you might have thought I wrote this story, which has an exquisite theme, and should have been exquisite, but which to me is not for there are things in it that I could not have done better if I had tried but as a whole ....no.  Read over "The Buddha" and "The Lotus" and if "Lilies of Jade" please the editors you will see again that "The Daughter of the Samurai" could never have been mine.     
I am sorry to have to ask you to tell Alma Edwards that I cannot accept her challenge and must deny this composition.  I am afraid that I have bored you but I know you will understand what I mean and that I am only sorry that what should have been a sparkling jewel should have disclosed to me so many flaws.
Faithfully,
HMK

Oh yes, and Japanese fishermen do not wear kimonos.