10 Barnes St.

August 2, 1927

Dear C A S:—

I was exceedingly pleased to hear of your vivid vacation, & can picture something of the strangeness & fantastic wonder in the scenery you so tantalisingly describe. I would certainly like to behold a landscape of so imaginatively provocative a character, since my experience has so far included nothing of the actually grand or sublime. At the same time I doubt if any scenery could affect me quite as poignantly & permanently as the mild, rich, traditional topography of my native New England. There are really two distinct personalities in me—the cosmic & fantastic on the one hand, & the historical, domestic, & antiquarian on the other hand. In my contacts with written literature the fantastic is paramount, but in all contacts with real life or the visible world the old-fashioned, soil-loving, conservative Yankee has full sway. Few persons have ever been as closely knit to New England's rock-ribbed hills as 1. Nothing else on earth has power to thrill me as poignantly as an old Rhode-Island upland at sunset, with straggling lines of stone wall, cool woods in the background, & dappled kine with tinkling bells strolling homeward through the green of the grass & the grey of the out-cropping granite ledges. And the little white gables of archaic farmhouses, windows lighting up one by one to match the twilight fireflies by the still meadow pool, are things without which I could not live very long ......

Ever yr most hble & obt Servt
H P L

Selected Letters (Arkham House) 290