NAWSA GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE Harvey, Paul

YEW TREE FARM,
MAYFIELD,
SUSSEX.
Oct 21. 28

Dear Kitty
Thank you for your pleasant 
letter. No, I do not think that 
I was ever at Chilmark or the 
other place you name. But it 
occurs to me that, if I remember 
right, they are mentioned in 
Hudson's charming Shepherd of the 
Wilkshire Downs; which perhaps 
you have not read. I have 
accordingly directed my bookseller 
to send you a copy. Get your 
reader to read you the chapter 
about sheep dogs, and if you do

not insist upon having the whole
book read to you, I shall be pretty
surprised.
Our wonderful summer has at
last come to an end, and we
have been having torrents of rain,
much to Sally's disgust, who hates
getting wet. All well here, otherwise,
and I hope it is the same with you.
Yours ever
Paul Harvey


YEW TREE FARM,
MAYFIELD,
SUSSEX.
March 15. 31

My Dear Kitty
I am much obliged to you for sending
me the 'Landmark', with its interesting article on
our Sussex country. It must have awakened
many a memory in your mind when you read
it.
I hope that my letter from Majorca reached you.
After I had posted it, a horrible suspicion came
across my mind that I had put the wrong
number in the address, 4 instead of 3 Monadnock
St. But I imagine that the intelligence of your
postman was equal to the problem.
Here we are back again. We left Majorca
and Barcelona in bright sunshine to find snow
and bitter cold here, which has lasted for a
fortnight. It is improving now, but it has been a 

I trust that all goes
well and that you
have recovered from
your tiresome attack. 
I dare say that like
us you are praying
for more genial
weather.
Love from Ethel-
Yrs Ever
Paul Harvey

a good lesson not to return so early to England. It
could not be helped in this case, but next year we
contemplate staying in the Majorca till May. Declining
health and income are driving us out of England to
a warmer and cheaper country!
    I am very hard at work now on the revision
of M.S.; cutting down 700,000 words to
500,000, no light task, which has to be
accomplished before we can go back to Majorca.
We contemplate going all the way by sea, starting
on the 7th Oct. We hope to let our house here
during our absence. One great problem is poor
 little Sally, but she is so general a favourite that
it will not be difficult to find her a good home.
Still, I can't bear to think of the long separation.
    I should be extremely grateful to Miss Alice if she
could without much trouble give us the date (year) of
G.W. Cable's death (I know all the other facts
about him that I want). Our books of reference
here do not appear to give it.

YEW TREE FARM,
MAYFIELD,
SUSSEX.
Jan. 29. 29

Dear Kitty
I have to thank you, and so has Sally,
for the charming Christmas card, with its spirited
representations of [?]. It gives a much better
idea of him than would a commonplace photograph.
I have also received your letter, so kindly
written by Miss Alice, about that incident in my
infant days, which interested me very much -
for I suppose we are all interested in our own
history, insignificant as it may be.
We are shortly leaving for Lausanne, where
we shall stay three weeks, taking with us our
faithful maid, Bessy, who has been years with
us, has never been abroad, and is dying to
see what a foreign country is like. So we

think that she will enjoy the Swiss mountains
and the Lake of Geneva, and that the change of
air will do her good. We shall then cross over
into Italy for a short time before coming home.
But Italy, alas, is not what it was; crowded &
sophisticated, and, you would no doubt add,
under the baneful shadow of Mussolini!
We are having an extraordinary cold winter;
not intense cold, but prolonged frost & snow, quite
dry & healthy, and I enjoy it. But many people
grumble. I am working very hard, trying to
earn enough to take us for another long voyage
next winter, on the model of our Jamaica trip.
But publishers are poor paymasters.
Please thank Miss Alice for the newspaper
cutting containing her interesting letter.
Yours ever
Paul Harvey


YEW TREE FARM,
MAYFIELD,
SUSSEX.
Oct 9. 32
My dear Kitty
Thank you for your good wishes. I
had almost succeeded in forgetting my birthday, but
my kind friends remember it for me, alas!
You ask me about Joan: I thought I told you
about her in my last letter. Since then her
health has been giving us uneasiness. It has been
a desperately uphill struggle for her, keeping, or
trying to keep, a luxury shop going in these bad
times; and times have been getting progressively 
worse since she started. Things of beauty are a
luxury nowadays, and the very first that people stop
buying when the pinch comes. Joan has felt the
shame; she is very easily depressed when things don't
go well, not very well-balanced in this respect.
And the doctors have now ordered her to give up 
the shop and live a healthier open-air life, free

from worry. (So easy for Doctors to prescribe, so 
difficult for man to achieve!) For the moment she
has gone to stay with some friends on the coast of
Wales, to [recruit?]. The shop will have to be got rid of,
if possible, and the stock sold; otherwise there will
be a heavy rent to pay, and taxes, for years to come;
and anyhow a large loss of capital. But her health
is the first consideration.
        I think another week's work should see the end of
my book, thank goodness, and I shall be a man of
leisure, or comparative leisure once more. I hate the
sight of a pen. Unfortunately I am committed to
the Clarendon Press for another job, but that is
not so heavy. We have had a lovely summer;
the autumn is setting in, grey skies and rusty
trees. We hope vaguely to go south somewhere after
Christmas, but everything will depend on Joan's
health and the disposal of the shop.
          I suppose you are back in Boston now, so I 
address you there. My respects to Miss Alice
                  Yours ever Paul Harvey


Of Good Sir Walter
Who Died a Century Ago
JOHN BUCHAN
in "Sir Walter Scott"
    Scott had not the metaphysical turn of
his countrymen, and he had no instinct
to preach, but the whole of his life was
based on a reasoned philosophy of conduct.
Its corner stones were humility and
discipline.  The life of man was difficult,
but not desperate, and to live it worthily
you must forget yourself and love others.
The failures were the egotists who were
wrapped up in self, the doctrinaires who
were in chains to dogma, the Pharisees
who despised their brethren. . . .
    He had no belief in the wizardry of
abstract political rights; his view was
Coleridge's—"It is a mockery of our fellow
creatures' wrongs to call them equal
in rights, when by the bitter compulsion
of their wants we make them inferior
to us in all that can soften the heart and
dignify the understanding."
    So he set himself within his own orbit
to make a better commonwealth.  He introduced
at Abbotsford a system of health
insurance, and being always mindful of
the moral issue, he refused the easy path
to charity, and in bad times arranged for
relief work at full wages.  He was a foe
to tippling houses, and defended the
Scottish reluctance to grant licenses as
compared with England.  He proposed a
scheme of unemployment insurance in
factories, the premiums to be paid wholly
by the owners, on the ground that it
would retard unhealthy industrial expansion
and compel manufacturers to
rely less on casual labor.
   It must be admitted that Scott's sympathies
with labor and his knowledge of
its problems were circumscribed.  To the
pathetic early struggles of trades-unionism
he was always hostile, for he scented
conspiracy, and he was horrified to discover
symptoms of it in Galashiels [where
Scott built Abbotsford].  He was above all
things a country man, who knew and
honored the peasant; of the proletariat
in the towns and

              the fierce confederate storm
         Of sorrow barricaded evermore
         Within the walls of cities.

he had Wordsworth's ignorance and restless
fear.  But for the poor man whom he
understood, who was knit to him by a
common domicile and ancestry, he had
sympathy and understanding in the amplest
measure.

Mayfield Oct 3. 34

Dear Miss Blackwell
    I am very sorry to hear you
have had heavy losses, and that this trouble
should come upon Kitty and threaten the
two remaining satisfactions of her life.
I am very glad to give what help I can,
for I need hardly say how much I have
been affected by this curious and touching
revival of affection in her old age for
the little boy she nursed 60 years ago.
As regards losses on investments, we are
all of us more or less in the same boat,
but this I fear is poor consolation.  I
enclose a cheque for £20, and I wish
it could be more; but my earning
capacity has now been reduced by failing
health to ludicrously small dimensions,
while my income from my savings has
like everyone else’s been whittled down
by losses.  Moreover I am, just now, myself
in a precarious and anxious position
owing to troubles in my own family.
No doubt you are asking Kitty’s other

Friends to likewise contribute, and I hope in
the aggregate enough may be forthcoming
to meet the worst of the emergency.

I of course know nothing of Kitty’s affairs,
nor should I presume to offer any suggestion
in regard to them in the ordinary course;
but since you have asked me for assistance,
may I say that in this country [?]
in the case of a person situated as Kitty
is — not capable of looking closely after her
affairs and without dependents — the
usual thing would be to purchase an annuity
with the whole or part of her capital, thus
increasing her income and protecting her
from the risk of injudicious investments.
I mention this in case there should still
be possibilities in this direction, and
you should care to consider the matter.
Sincerely yours
Paul Harvey

YEW TREE FARM,
MAYFIELD,
SUSSEX.
Aug 14.32

Dear Kitty
    I am glad to think that by now you will
probably have moved from the town to the cool breezes
of Martha's Vineyard -- at least I imagine that you
have cool breezes there; but I am bound to say that the
only time I was by the sea in American in August (in 1887!), it 
was most fearfully hot there.  A New York [?]
misnamed Bliss, took me to bathe at Manhattan Beach
then gave me a dinner of clams and (decaying) soft-shell
crab, for which I suffered the next day the most appalling
torments.
   Your letters are a great pleasure to me.  I
admire your spirit and courage, you admirable
memory, and your wonderfully easy style.  Dear
me!  I wish I could write my book as freely
as you dictate. I have now been three weary months
-- or is it four? at the revision, and have still
a month's work before me.  I am just stupefied
with the arduous overwork.  Moreover I have

which has impressed critics
rather favourably.  But
as there are 26
speaking parts (!)
there is not much
chance of anyone
producing it.
Well, goodbye.  I
am sick of the
sight of pens, ink,
and paper!
Love from Ethel.
Yours ever 
Paul Harvey

rather quarrelled with my publishers, who want to add
some stuff about a New York journalist, is best New
York journalist, for the benefit (they think) of their
American market. (No disrespect meant, of course, to
the style of your American journals; but it doesn't
harmonise with the sobriety of my own twaddle).
So I have had my summer completely spoilt; a pity, 
because for once, we have had a lovely summer.
Ethel is only tolerably well, suffering from some
slight infection, not precisely beated yet, which has a 
depressing affect on her spirits. Sally (dog), likewise, has
been in trouble. She developed two warts on her eyelid, 
which had to be cut out, as they were irritating the
eye. Moreover, she insists on digging in the garden 
at a spot where an ancient piece of cheese was
buried some time ago; and this means repressive
measures. She is already getting old - very white
under her little chin. I am afraid she will not
be very long-lived.
Joan's shop is doing poorly; no one has any money
to spend on luxuries. On the other hand she has written
a play on the Egyptian King and religious reformer Akunaton

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