For your basic esthetics course you should read “when art becomes propaganda”, in the April 17 Saturday Review by Alberto Monaria, “a distinguished [?] novelist.”
Dearest Patricia:
Guess when and where I got this sheet of paper to start my letter on!
Today I was renewed in my determination to become and stay as well and healthful as possible for as long as possible in order to help you as much as lies within my power to realize the goals that are or may become yours and to do this partly by helping your mother and her “crew” for your little brothers and sisters meet the social and financial problems that hedge them round about. Not only have I come to love and esteem your whole family as my own but because of the few days just past in Chico I have come to realize even more than before that you are the most truly beautiful personality I have been privileged to know and I love you for every bit of it. You were beautiful in your tears over leaving your new friends including I think my sister Joyce - but especially the Whiting’s for as you rightly said they had so little preparation for showing you so much of their hearts as they did, yet they poured out all they had to give and enveloped you in a flood of friendliness and love such as you had not before experienced. Your depth of feeling and your tears revealed your sensitivity and responsiveness as a person and thus the real beauty that is yours as a living soul. But be assured, my darling, that something of this as your essential nature shows through all the time to all who themselves have the potential of being deeply and genuinely loving human beings, had this not been apparent in you to the Whiting’s. Their response, though friendly, would not have been so outgoing, so complete, and so powerful in [page 2] eliciting your response. And believe me, it is this in you that shines always before me and that has so completely captured me, my loyalty, my devotion and my love and affection. They are all yours in as full measure as it is possible for me to give and as you allow me to give. So you must, my dear, dear, darling one, help me to stay as well as possible. Words are inadequate to express my feelings and so I stumble in trying as some of my faulty writing reveals, but I believe you understand.
Nothing that I have ever done was more justified than my changing all the plane schedules and staying over the extra day so that I could go back to San Jose with you. To be able to share in your beautiful sadness which was so close to the depth of feeling that would have been mine had I been required to go back to San Jose without you, was among the finest if not the superlative of my experience in life this far. I would not trade anything that has happened to me for it - or for the parting in San Jose when we hugged each other and both sobbed in mingled joy and sorrow and depth of feeling. These are the kinds of experiences that raise human souls above the commonplace and this we have done. And now, it is my wish and pledge to help to make it possible for you to meet and know and call your own in the love that is friendship at its deepest and best as many persons - probably never a great number - as life shall make possible for you. If I can do that, then my life will have reached a higher plane of accomplishment than ever is vouchsafed to most.
Shakespeare said, “Parting is such sweet sorrow” - and that we now have experienced. It is now our opportunity and destiny to experience [page 3] even more of it with - I hope - more of sweetness than of sorrow. Just let us stay as close in love and spirit as we can so that I as I and you as you can find and bui9ld the richness in life that is possible no matter what the storms of fate that get may swirl about us. let us be remembered - because known to be - two persons - singly or in concert - who are deeply concerned with helping others achieve in spite of the frailty that seems to be the common lot of mankind.
After I get back next week - as the days, weeks, and months go by, and as opportunity makes possible, I want sincerely to help you and the doors of life wider for your mother and all her brood while at the same time taking care that you shall be provided with the chance to work out your own future in the manner most deserved by your own spirit. Whatever I have of material means I shall gladly use in this cause. So we shall talk over the problems, needs and possibilities and work to bring them to reality!
I am having the kind of enjoyable vacation here in Bloomington that I had every reason to expect. Rapport with Sandi and Dave is complete and little Carrie is a darling. In less than a day she has accepted me as her own and Sandi tells me that I may now expect a thorough dissection at her hands since whomever she adopts she expects to share completely in her life. Someday perhaps I can bring you to Bloomington and let you add Sandi and Carrie to you and yours and also Dave “incidentally”/ Both Sandi and Dave are also deeply involved in the human scene. Dave is now helping to work out a basis in which students and faculty of Indiana University may work on an “exchange” basis for varying lengths of time with students and faculty - primarily negroes - in the college and universities of the south!
Well, darling - I must call you such as I can think of you in no other way. I’ll close for you with all my love, as always - Carl.
Dr. Carl Duncan and Patricia Whiting Collection (SJSU)
