An Empathic TLS from Mary Austin to the Daughter of John Haynes Holmes.

AUSTIN, Mary

Edité par n.p., Taos, NM, 1919

A propos de cet article

A fine 2-page signed letter from Southwest author Mary Austin to Miss Frances Holmes, daughter of one of America's most famous and beloved liberal clergymen, John Haynes Holmes. Typed on rectos only, with numerous corrections in hand by Austin, and signed in pen on the final leaf. In the original hand-addressed envelope and postmarked 1919. Clean tear to upper margin of envelope. The condition and the content are superior.After graduation from college Mary Hunter [Austin] decided to move to California with her mother and brother. Their plan was to homestead in the Tejon Valley. Three years later she met and married Wallace Stafford Austin an engineer and something of a speculator and a year later, when the married couple were living in Independence in the Owens Valley, they had a daughter who was born developmentally disabled. It was also here that she wrote her classic "Land of Little Rain" and a goodly portion of her other well known books. The young couple struggled but finally divorced and the disabled daughter was put in an institution. After spending some time in an art colony in Carmel, Austin moved to Mew Mexico. In Santa Fe she helped establish the Santa Fe Little Theater and directed the group's first production. It is during this period that Austin wrote this charming letter to the daughter of one of America's most beloved and liberal clergy John Haynes Holmes. She is answering an earlier letter from Frances in which Frances must have voiced some opposition the the limiting effect of organized religion. Mary details her current life at the start; "Carnegie Institute was so well pleased with the work I did for them at Santa Fe that they have given me the money for a social survey of Taos County. Taos County is as large as the state of Delaware, the roads are bad, living conditions primitive, and this is the rainy season. I have already traveled about seven hundred miles, most of it in an open wagon with an Indian driver, I have nearly lost my life twice, once in crossing a creek in a cloud burst and once by drinking bad water, and I have lost my temper a good many times." Later she begins to answer Holmes' inquiries: "But first of all, the thing to do is to make for yourself a clear statement of what you feel that you need to complete your life. This must be stated to yourself as a need not a vague wish. You and I both in our youth suffered from the idea prevalent in the Protestant Church, that the thing for a Christian to do was to simply take what came, call it good and be thankful. Jesus never taught anything like that. He made perfectly clear and definite selections of what he needed for his work, out of all the possible things he may have done, he selected death as the best means of doing what he wanted to do the most, Witness to the Truth.This is the way the thing works. Life comes to you if you are not too fussy about the way it comes., With love, [signed] Mary."In 1919 Francis Holmes was quite young and probably unsure about her upcoming marriage and thus the plea for hep to Mary Austin. Mary Austin and John Haynes Holmes were very close and the corresponded frequently. John Haynes Holmes was an extraordinary man. After graduating from Harvard Divinity School, he was called to the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian) in New York City and served as its Senior Minister until 1918, when he left the American Unitarian Association (AUA) because of differences over its policy towards World War I, but continued to preach there. Shortly after that, his church became non-denominational and renamed itself the "Community Church of New York". Members of the church, however, insisted that the church retain its AUA membership. Despite that, he became the Senior Minister there again and served until his retirement in 1949, when he became Minister Emeritus. He rejoined the AUA in 1960, just before the Unitarian and Universalist churches merged and he was featured in the last AUA yearbook published before the merger. He is usual.

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: An Empathic TLS from Mary Austin to the Daughter of John Haynes Holmes.
• Éditeur: n.p., Taos, NM
• Date de parution: 1919