Edwin to Melvin Sunday, 7th January 1945
Sunday evening
Precious you,
I cannot let any more time ago by without talking with you even though it has to be through the courtesy of the USO and their paper and pencil.
First, I want to say again, I love you, my own precious sweet. I went into the office this afternoon, thinking I would have some privacy to write you in, but no such luck, so worked until about eight, came to town for a bite, and here we are. (Oh darling, if that were only true this would be a heavenly USO.)
It seems so long since I wrote to you Tuesday evening, probably because I have not heard from you in the meantime, but I realise Precious that your answer would not have had time to reach meet in the meantime.
I pampered myself, so leading arresting all this week thru Thursday, thinking that the day I would be able to relax the mind and body from the strain I had been under the past month. However, I think for getting very angry in the office Friday was about the best thing that could have happened to me. Although I was unable to say just what I thought of the situation, I was able to make a few sarcastic remarks, and later I was able to laugh at the entire situation, including myself for permitting it to upset me. Friday evening I went to see an inspired performance of Traviatia with Vivian Della Chiesa. It was actually more enjoyable than some of the off nights at the Met. Everyone played and sang as if their career depended upon their press notices. I felt at home in a centre seat in next to the last row of the gallery.
Last night, precious, I came into town about eleven for a midnight show, a very good mystery called “Laura” with Judith Anderson and Clifton Webb in the cast. After getting up for lunch today I went with entertaining movie called “To have and to hold”. Am not recommending it is still find it entertaining. From there to the office. “My Week” must be rather boring to you, darling, and I will try to get a better letter off to you the first part of this week. Maybe tomorrow I will have a letter from you to answer.
Darling, I hate all this delay to our plans of being with each other soon again. I do not know yet, but rumour has it that it may be a couple of weeks longer than I wrote you Tuesday.
Don’t start making plans because this is an offhand remark, but when delays like this occur I feel more and more as if your reasoning were correct.
I love you, love you, love you, my own Precious Darling.
E.
Melvin to Edwin 10 January 1945
10 January 1945
Oh my Precious, god given baby,
It was wonderful to receive your newest letter to me –seven lovely, marvellous pages of it, and I adore every syllable. It was complete with everything I wanted to hear you say (except for your address is it still the same?), and the distressing news about the additional hold up in your sailing date. This latter point I will go into at length below, but first I want to get out of the way the lighter, less expeditious details.
My darling baby, I am so glad you’ve been able to relax this past week. After the beastly period you put in, working till all hours and getting so little rest, you deserve every minute of “luxury” you can squeeze out of your existence in that forsaken hole. I hear “Laura” is excellent, and am waiting for it to hit the neighbourhood houses here, and get to see it then. It has finished on F Street weeks ago. You make my musical mouth water over the performance of “Traviata” you saw –sounds wonderful, and I’m so delighted, my goofy baby, at long last “art” has visited New Orleans and that you were in on the deal. Saturday evening I took in a glimpse of “Wilson” and enjoyed spots of it very much, though, as is often the case with such all-out productions, founded a rather too long. Sunday evening I visited the Adelbergers and got my Christmas present from them – or bottle of the same peach liqueur I brought to New Orleans. Between that and the bourbon Uncle Dan gave me, we have the beginnings of a small but it wine cellar started. Incidentally, neither the major I work for nor the Adelbergers have received the pralines I ordered and paid for the day after Christmas. The major teases me about it daily, and finally I had to show him the receipt, which I was wise enough to keep, to keep him quiet. Otherwise, my life has been – on the surface only –quiet and uneventful. I’ve taken time out to write to you, my beloved, and to perform a few routine chores at the squadron, such as drill, etc. Otherwise – nothing whatever. That is all this about your blowing up at the office had the other day? Whatever provoked you to a display of anger, my love? And what exactly did you do and say? Whatever it was, baby, it sounds like a good beginning on which to base later outbursts, when the need arises. Understands me to a point of profound importance. The lengthy letter I am still holding, awaiting word from you on your current address, covers most of what is in my mind, but your remarks in the letter I received from you tonight prompt a few further observations. Edwin, Darling, Something Has Got To Be Done About So Lengthy And Dispairful Separation As We Are Enduring! Know your report that the Alexandria may not sail for several weeks longer than you suggested in your letter last week. By the time it sales, two months, at least, will have passed without our seeing each other –longer than we have ever been apart since we have become known to each other! The longest we have been a part, so far, is 5-6 weeks at the very most. I don’t know how I ever got through even such a period is that, and it is almost inconceivable to me that a greater period may elapse before we are in each other’s arms again. Don’t you realise that this new delay will bring our separation to between three and four months? Oh my precious darling, why won’t you see the handwriting on the wall and interpreting it in our best interests? The letters stand there in type so huge that even my myopic eyes can read them 1000 miles off! Don’t you see, Edwin, that unless you take matters in your own precious and capable hands there will be one delay after another –one deferment, one postponement on the heels of the next? There are infinite number of ways that the service can create such situations, such a variety in fact, that one cannot possibly anticipate them all. And the hellish blood then at least with his sweat and tears –copious, copious tears. And below it, I’m so deathly ill of crying! You say … “but when delays like this occur I feel more and more hours if your reasoning were correct”.
occur I feel more and more as if your reasoning were correct”. My sweetheart love, of course my reasoning in this instance is correct! It is the result of an almost agonizing scrutiny and soul-searching; everything I’ve got, every mental and moral resource at my command has gone into the evolution remarks to you I have probed, searched, inspected and evaluated with the minutest care every statement I thrust upon you, both in person in New Orleans and now in type, and know that, so far as I have any power to reason at all, they are sound, sane and solid. This latest news, though still possibly only in the rumor stage, is further proof (as if further proof were needed!) of what we may expect, unless we take matters into out own hands. The days stretch into weeks and now the weeks threaten to cast their dismal length into months. I can’t take it much longer, my baby – I just can’t: Our being together is all I can think of for more than two minutes at a time. Steauart has been after me to read more manuscript with him – and I have practically nothing ready. I have tried to sit down and write, but nothing comes out of me but thoughts of you, of us. If this keeps up, Steuart will be justified to break off his collaboration with me, and that would be most damaging to me at this point. whether I like it or not, I am nothing apart from you – and can and shall be everything when we are together again for keeps. God, Edwin, I don’t know how to make my need more explicit. And being darling, precious one, it is not a selfish desire that forces these ejaculations out of me. When I say I need you, I do not mean to imply that that need exists within myself alone:- the truth is that the need is woven in the very texture of our mutual love and when I cry out to you like this, it is the voice of love which gives utterance to my words.
In the letter I am holding, I have gone into the matter of my feelings a good deal more at length, and to go on now, here, would only lead to repetition. But you will see that the above plea is not the whole story, that there is still more logic and reason and sensibility to what I say than appears above. I am most anxious to send that letter to you, but must be certain that it will reach you promptly before I send it off. So PLEASE DON’T DELAY IN LETTING ME HAVE YOUR ADDRESS!
Considering the length of time which must elapse before the Alexandria goes on shake-down, can’t you possibly, somehow, by fair means or foul, squeeze a furlough out of them – even if only for a week? I can send you a good part of the fare and have enough on hand here so that you will not have to spend anything at all in Washington. So the money is, for once, no problem. TRY, darling – it is so terrifically important that we see each other before the cancer of time eats us away – and I already feel a brutal gnawing at my entrails. It actually seems like months already since I saw you, and it is not yet two weeks: It doesn’t seem possible: My God, much more of an extension to this maddening longing and you probably will be $1000 richer – by courtesy of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co! Baby, baby, COME BACK, COME BACK, COME BACK!
Shall sign off now, my only love, but with the humble request that you not get angry with me, nor become impatient. All this is my very life and so it is impossible to magnify it’s tremendous importance – to either of us! I love you more than life itself … Please write to me at once – it is so marvelous getting your wonderful letters.
My heart and soul
your own
