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Correspondence from John Quinn to James Huneker
December 26, 1914.
My dear James:
I was shocked when I got yours of the 24th Thursday evening to hear of your accident. I am awfully sorry you had such tough luck. It is good it was not worse.
You say it was a "skidding taxi". Was there a collision? Whose carelessness was it? If it was any one's carelessness, or the carelessness of the driver, why haven't you got a good case for damages? Has that phase of the matter occurred to you? Not that I want the case, but I should be glad to help you in any way I can and might be able to get a settlement for you without litigation or your going into court.
I passed a very quiet day yesterday. I got most of my telegrams off the night before.
I haven't heard from Gregg or seen him for some little time.
I haven't had a chance to write to Conrad but hope to soon. I am in disgrace with several friends of mine on the other side because I haven't answered their letters.
Of course, writers and artists will suffer first. But I believe this is going to be a long war. I don't see, though, why the great artists should not still produce, the great poets and the great painters. People will get tired after all even of the excitement of war. Today the stimulus and the excitement is so great that the news of war is more exciting than any novel or story. But there will be to a degree, a reaction. Shelley and Byron and Coleridge wrote during the Napoleonic wars, and Goethe went on, both in letters and in love.
Crowley called up my office several times last week. Each time I was "busy" or out. Finally his secretary began to call, and then Watson got the news that he wanted to consult me on a legal matter. It appears that Madame Strindberg has been slandering him to Temple Scott of Brentano's and somebody else, telling them what a fearful man he was in London or God knows what. I can imagine myself defending a guilty correspondent in a divorce case; I can imagine myself defending a criminal or even a murderer if the court assigned me to the job; I can imagine myself having a prostitute for a client; I can imagine myself defending a nigger of chinaman where the facts appealed to me. But I cannot imagine myself having anything, even remotely, to do with a legal squabble between a woman whose friends call her a slut and a man whose enemies call him a bugger. There are some limits. Damn her, she seems to be always making mischief. And the funny thing about it is that Crowley about two weeks ago when I saw him casually, spoke about her as sweetly as possible; said that "she wasn't a bad sort at all"; that he feared she was "up against it"; that he would do anything he could to help her; and that at heart she wasn't bad, and that he hoped she would get along well. Crowley isn't a bad sort. I know nothing about him personally. He is not a great poet. There is a good deal of the over-grown boy about him.
The last I heard of Madame S. in London was that she had taken up with Wyndham Lewis. He is the chap who was the chief man in The Blast. It is too bad that he didn't turn on his blast and blight and blister the bitch, and in her larynx a galling give her. You will remember Synge's curse on the woman who denounced the Playboy:
"In her guts a galling give her, Blight her larynx, guts and liver," etc.
Synge made good use of such words as blast and bitch and guts and sluts.
I had fewer "presents" thank God, this year than before. They were such that I could trade one against the other. I had two presents sent to me by friends which I promptly shifted back to two other friends.
But Christmas presents are in one respect like the Clearing House—all balances have to be settled in cash.
Well, good luck to you and let me know if there is anything I can do for you. If you want me to come out and talk about the case I shall be glad to do so.
Sincerely yours,
John Quinn
James Huneker, Esq., Westminster Court, 1618 Beverly Road, Brooklyn, N.Y.
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