Letters

Dree Hemingway (Hem's great-granddaughter- from the Hadley line)

I went to find a picture of Papa writing a letter for this: /http://www.lettersofnote.com/

"Letters Of Note" a real interesting Web Site of not so well known letters. I've been working on fictionalizing a long 17 page letter the real Joseph Strong wrote to his friend Charles Stoddard about the crossing from Samoa to San Francisco. Got a copy on microfilm from the Huntington Library - actually the entire collection of letters that Stoddard kept. I'm putting three real ones in the novel and using the long one for a dramatization near the end of the book. If ya want to see the first 50 pages of the novel, it's linked here: http://www.thetruthabouttreasureisland.com

Still dipping into the collection of essays by Christopher Morley, the latest was about the Queen Mary making its first arrival in NYC in about 1936-37.  What he mentioned was the acquaintances with him, a bunch of Morans, apparently grandchildren of this guy:

It's nice to imagine our grandchildren and great grandchildren having marvelous lives because we gave them a bootstrap up.
And somebody finding our letters after we are long gone- or even someone keeping our letters after we are long gone.
Dree's a high class model with magazine covers. Quite a ways from Hem killing pigeons in the park and hiding them in Bree's grandfather's stroller to take them back to Hadley for dinner.

Tom Moran was a painter- did a lot of real western landscapes on trips with surveying parties. A vegetarian mostly, forced to eat bacon and beans because the government surveying parties didn't have that kind of menu. Had a bad stomach for art's sake.
This is what you find in letters.

Joseph Strong worrying about his eyesight, Bill Faulkner worrying about money, HEM worrying about the Germans he killed before the liberation of Paris - cool stuff.

This is one of Moran's