Dearest Patricia:
I was out to your mom’s today from about 12:15 to 4:00 P.M. but, as you probably know from talking to her this morning, she is some better. She is taking penicillin, which appears to be working out her chest infection. She is about out of the penicillin and if she is not better (notably) by tomorrow I’ll see if more can not be obtained for her.
As you may surmise, I was most agreeably pleased when I got home last evening from Lassen, where we had had a wonderful week with deal weather, not the sizzling temperatures of the valleys of California and of southern California.
Your message on the card was what I expected as I know, of course, that you would be busy [?] the weekend away from San Jose. Nevertheless, it gave me a big lift, because you signed it “Love P.C.” and anytime you do or say anything that tells me I am still high in your affections fills my cup of happiness overflowing.
The big candle is beautiful and just right for the holder. I’ll not light it until you are here to share the joy of seeing it lit. I am grateful beyond words for it. I had not anticipated anything so gorgeous!
And thanks ever so much for the rearrangement of my furniture. The room will be much more useful now. I think I’d better set aside certain hours (more or less) for writing and get back to it, even though it will slow somewhat the completion of the room rearrangement. After all the reason for retirement a year early was to get at the writing [page 2] and you doubtless recall that you were a prime stimulus in getting me to make the break when I did.
Incidentally (my word), Doris said she told you about having read some letters from Charlotte that she found in one of the boxes of things I gave her and that this was the cause of her disturbed feeling a couple of weeks ago. Of course I didn’t realize the letters where in any of the things that I gave her. however they related to a phase of the relations between Charlotte and me (my Charlotte problem) that occurred before I had made your acquaintance. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you, but briefly, when I sent a check to a memorial fund for Joe Chamberlain, Charlotte responded by telling me that she thanked me but I was under no obligations to contribute $25.00, the amount of my check. But Joe had been my best friend at Stanford and I felt that $25.00 was none too much. Then in the next three or four letters Charlotte began a campaign of courting me. I knew her only as a pleasant person from the not over 3 hours of visits that had occurred between the Chamberlains and Neva and me in the preceding 10 years. I told her that if a marriage between us was a practicality, it would have to be on a basis of friendship only of two persons, each of whom had lost a mate. Then I tried every way I know to establish a relationship that might be a proper basis for a marriage and that might last. I took Charlotte to Chico to get acquainted with Joyce [page 3] and Tom and my older sister Annie was staying with them at the time. I took her to the ranch at Cupertino where she got acquainted with Dale and Dorothy and their 3 children. I took her to visit friends and to the dinner honoring me when I was Grand Marshall. But it was no go. She proved to have only one quality of any importance - agreeableness. She had no ideas, no pronounced opinions (except such things as race prejudice). She seemed to have no capacity for enjoyment of anything beyond a few minutes. She took me to the Portland Bar (a very fine one with some interesting features) and had “seen it” in about 15 minutes. Eventually I concluded, after trying every angle I could, that there was absolutely no basis for a marriage between us.
During the time that you have known her and of my visits to see her, I have had either to sit and watch T.V. indefinitely or to be frustrated in trying to help her find a solutions for her problems. She would tell me she had a thousand things to consult me about and then when I got to Forest Grove (her home) she only wanted me to be there and would not talk of her concerns because she wanted to see “such and such” a T.V. program that ws on. This went on till the evening was late and I went to my motel or once to the home of a friend of hers who angered Charlotte by charging me for the room space for 3 nights. She still thinks that just by my presence, I could solve all her problems, but when I get there (except when she was in the mental hospital and wanted (naturally) to get out) she has no problems to discuss. Well I’m sorry to end on this sort of a note. And I’m looking forward to seeing you when you get back.
If I’d had the opportunity to know you before Charlotte began her campaign on me, I would have been completely indifferent to her from the beginning. I have always told you the truth (as I try always to tell others) and the truth is as I have said many times - you are the most remarkable and substantiated young woman I have ever known. And I do not care to know or attempt to know another. You are in thought and temperament more like Neva than anyone else I have known and that is a compliment to you both. You are a person who accomplishes things by strength of character, as was Neva, but in some ways you surpass Neva for you have won your way to an independence of inhibitions to a degree she was never able to attain - not with the family she had.
Well, I’ll tell you this sort of thing over and over because I feel it so strongly - and so I look forward joyously to seeing you again - to lighting the candle and to the dinner you have proposed that we have together in something of a celebration for the changes wrought in my apartment.
With all my love - until I see you - and forever after - Carl.
Dr. Carl Duncan and Patricia Whiting Collection (SJSU)
