Dec. 7, 1964
12:50 P.M.
Dearest Angel:
(I use this salutation just to let you know that I know).
I hope that if you have not yet found time to read all of my last letter (message #4), that you will soon for much of it has important bearing on your and my relationship.
Just now (and I’ll try not to be overly long about it) I’ll attempt – at least partly to resolve your puzzlement about “how one person can be so important and mean so much to another” as you do to me. I’ll begin with a verse from one of your favorite authors – Tennyson.
Flower in the Crannied Wall.
“Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root an all, in my hand
Little flower – but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
The point is – it is not necessary fully to understand – It is necessary only to believe and accept. Perhaps as time proceeds I shall find ways to add meaning to acceptance. I think I may have told you that, as far as I know, there are only two ways in which a person “understands” anything. It may be explainable (expressable or translatable) into other terms that are “understood” – or “understanding is simply acceptance of something experienced.” You’re in process of experiencing the fact of your importance to me, as I have repeatedly attempted to express convincingly to you and as I shall continue to express until it becomes crystal clear.
Truly you are the most wonderful thing that has happened to me in years and for this I love you deeply and sincerely. Nothing has made me happier in a long-long time than the feeling that we are gradually establishing a genuine father-daughter relationship that give the love relationship between us complete freedom of expression without risk of the problems, misinterpretations and potential misunderstandings the so frequently beset the path of romantic love. There is romance aplenty, but it is of a distinctive kind on a high plane and as I have told you before, you can trust me utterly!
Now as to the “image” that you have established in my mind and heart and soul – what you mean to me.
Beauty. You are the loveliest being I have come to know. Only among the girls in the [page 2] Ice Follies have I seen any one recently who even remotely approaches you – and I am not so sure but that, were you in the Ice Follies, you would outshine them all! And your beauty is not just loveliness of face and features; it is something that shines out of your eyes and is in the essence of your lifting voice! Beauty is as important to me as food or fresh air and so to me, this appeal that you embody is irresistible!
Poetry. Your sensitivity to the fabric of poetry (beauty in word and thought and expression) that runs throughout life and is evident to the discerning mind in the whole of the universe strikes a strong chord of response in me. As I’ve told you, you are the only person I now know on whom I can pour out the poetry of my own soul. This makes you very precious, though I suspect at times that I have tended to overwhelm you with the quantity of my outpourings.
Religiosity. Your fundamentally religious principles according to which you order your relationships with others. Though you say that you no longer have a positive belief in a God (such as you were taught about in your earlier years, your actions are those of a person of deep Christian (or Buddhist, etc.) principles. As Bertrand Russell – according to his editor, Robert Egner, in “Bertrand Russell’s Best” maintains that “what men need is not dogma, but rather an attitude of Christian love or compassion.” You exemplify this in all that you do in relation to others. In like manner, I have long believed that “whatever God there be,” he could not be the specific, [illegible], & not altogether admirable God that so many “ good Christians” – members of one church or another, profess to believe in and follow. Surely a God is an irrational invention of a human mind. It is for this reason that Rev. Peabody, formerly of the Congregational Church some 3 miles west of where I live in the Ladera District, told me, “ You are a reverent agnostic – considerably more reverent than many of the persons in my congregation.” So Patricia, you and Bertrand Russell, and I travel in the same company!
Goodness. Your essential goodness in wishing no one ill. – Your complete sincerity, your honesty and understanding, your fearlessness and strength as a personality in terms of your beliefs, your sympathy and compassion for other – all these things endear you to me as they impress others. As I told you – regardless of merits, there are many sisters who would not [page 3] give up – even temporarily – cherished dreams and ambitions in order to help out a mother overwhelmed with problems. When you sat on the bed & told me of your concern for Connie & Leon, you pulled on my heart strings and bound me even closer to you in feeling than before. And your appreciation of my efforts to brighten life for each of them from your mother down to little Mort – when you spoke of the love in my eyes when I looked at the little ones – this more strongly than ever marked you as a very precious individual.
Outlook – Your joyous outlook on life; your eagerness to taste and experience as many of its facets as possible, your delight in happy occurrences, great or small, in your life or the lives of others, all expressed in your shining, or serious, eyes and your lifting voice, bespeak a basic sweetness that is impossible to put into words.
Impact. You have reopened for me the floodgates of emotion and expression that were damned up when I lost my wife and for a time my sense of purpose, in addition to those that had been [page 4] damned up long before by the conventions of society and the limitations of academia. For all this I am drawn to you as to a magnet.
Sharing. Finally, your willingness to share with me, on the basis of appreciation and soul kinship – the lovely personality that you! you! you! over and over again, to grant me a place in your circle of love – All this I treasure more than I can say. I hope that I shall never fall from grace in your sight or lose the privilege of continued sharing with you in increasing trust and confidence – the finest experiences of the human spirit. I trust that more and more you will learn to accept from the expressions of affection that are due to a daughter who also is an equal and an abiding friend.
With all my love to you
Sincerely – Carl.
Dr. Carl Duncan and Patricia Whiting Collection (SJSU)
