Painting with Words

Oct. 20, 1944

Dearest love,

Finally I got a letter, an earlier one postmarked Sept. 29^th and I found it very, very interesting.

One thing I meant to straighten out before this – I see more of Alan these days and his morale is not high. The reason being that Annabella has been sick, so sick, in fact, that she was forced to give up her job. I believe Alan said it was a stomach ailment. So now you know why she is uncommunicative and why Alan isn’t very happy, worrying about her. Alan does some artwork and a lot of it is very good, but his production hasn’t been on the same scale mine has.

Yesterday I worked on designs for Xmas cards for the 23^rd Headquarters. If they do accept my designs, one of them, I may make some money out of the deal. I don’t know what they have selected as yet. I guess I’ve been too busy just making pictures to have given much thought to Christmas cards, like George did. I’m afraid a design I might make would be too sophisticated to go over very big. I have some swell ideas for Xmas cards, however, even at this late date. I’m sorry I hadn’t started sooner on it, but I know that I don’t have nearly as much free time as George has and we move around so constantly I’d be afraid to give any orders to printers since it would be very possible that we’ll have to move in a big hurry.

Along with your letter I got a package from Mom and it didn’t take very long getting here. Boy, I’d give anything to know what has happened to all those packages you have sent to me.

So you visited Eleanor. I hope you enjoyed yourself. Did she make any comment on the work you took along? As for Etta Holder, I used to go out with her and over quite a period of time approximately a year. I believe I’ve told you about her. Yes, I was attracted by her good looks when I first met her and I took her out a number of times but somehow nothing much came of it. She doesn’t have similar ideas and I found out through knowing her and others, too, who were very good to look at, that beauty is skin deep and there would have too me [sic] more than just beauty in the one I married. I went with her, before her, a pretty and extremely intelligent girl whose name was Shirley Lambert. It was the same story here. I took Vivian Shapiro out quite often, you remember her from Cooper Union, her ideas were closer to my own but still something was missing. And as you know I saw Donnie a number of times – then the bombshell struck when I met you and it didn’t take many dates with you to know that here was the girl. It also took some hot arguments to convince me that I didn’t like being without you. If I weren’t affected by not seeing you for a time I would have felt it wasn’t a lasting thing, but it happened the other way around. I’m glad too, aren’t you? Other than Etta’s looks, what did you think of her as a person, did you get a chance to get acquainted? How is Eleanor these days?

Tonight is another night without much to do, there’s a lousy picture playing so that’s out. Harry Gottesman wants me to do a sketch of him to send to his wife Ruth. I must write one letter to the folks and I have an idea for a Christmas card that would be swell if I worked it out the way I visualize it. In this outfit, you know, there are so many artists that many of them make their own cards. I also wanted to do a watercolor, from a snapshot, of a scene in England that I had always wanted to do, but we moved before I got to it. I tell you Angel the season has made the landscape so gorgeous here that I can’t restrain myself I want to paint so badly. It’s terrible because my hands are tied until Sunday when we get a little time to ourselves. What one could do with a set of oils here!

You can see, I’ve run out of stationary [sic] and I have to write on this crappy paper, I  hope that you will be able to read this tiny writing.

There isn’t very much more that’s new. My arms ache to have you in them and my lips are very lonesome for yours – no others will do. It’s easy enough over here to meet all the girls one wants to but I don’t want to be involved in foreign entanglements, on that score I’m an isolationist! I love you, Judy, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you[,] I love you, my hand is getting tired but my love for you isn’t. Goodnight, darling.

Yours,

Arthur