by Cathy Gilmore | Feb 14, 2016 | Love Letters from the Archive
[Dorothy and Ellsworth become engaged in the Spring of 1933, yet the are still spending summers apart while Ellsworth works in Idaho, and then later when he serves a six-month mission in Colorado. -Cathy]
[Ellsworth to Dorothy, 29 July 1933]
It is evening. The earth is fresh and green from the summers first rain. The sun has set but it is still light so as to see better the soft dewy foliage. It is sweet. The air is so clean and pure it is as if everything was in a preparedness of some sort. I’ll bet it’s just waiting for a lovely Miss Smith who is going to come and visit me for awhile. Yes, I can see her coming. He hair is back over her shoulders and the wind is blowing through it. Her lips are parted and a smile is a welcome to me. She is on her tiptoes and her arms are partly reaching to me in welcome. Her eyes are as stars, yet they shine with no glaring light, rather it is a soft brown glow that speaks of love, acknowledgement, trust and unending spirit. Is she going to get here? It is growing dusk. I’ll go meet her and taking her into my arms, press her gently to me.
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[Ellsworth to Dorothy, 15 December 1933]
Dearest—
Just a note at this late hour to tell you I have not forgotten you and that I’m still alive and happy. The stars seem so low and bright tonight that I yearn for your company. This is truly a beautiful country and the only thing to make it more perfect would be— (you know who).
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[Ellsworth to Dorothy 29 December 1933]
Dearest Little Starlet,
I’m oozing with sentiment tonight. The moon is full and my thoughts run tenderly along such lines as boat rids on a lagoon, walks in the park when it’s just chilly enough for the arm of your loved one to warm you, and skating on crystal clear ice with a sweetheart on my arm as the cold blue white stars wink and fall in the frosty sky. Then thoughts go back to June nights when the air is burdened with sweet perfume of big copper colored roses and lilac. When grass and ground invites you to linger and muse and in silence wonder at the handiwork of God & his goodness to Man. Two lovers are in bliss as they feel more than they can say, and when the kiss of the betrothed is as a sacrament for themselves, to a greater power than Man. Dreaming of days to come when service and love shall know no bounds and two shall be as one. Blessed children and blessed old age; even death is then beautiful.
It is beautiful tonight. Old Pikes Peak in majestic stillness is in communion with the stars & trees. It is quiet. The noise of city life is not near and as I look out in the dark, it seems you are near. See— I’m talking to you now. I’ll tell you how I love you if you don’t leave. This may seem foolish but you are near. And I know of a surety of my love for you.
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[Ellsworth to Dorothy, 22 February 1934]
“Did you ever see a dream walking? Well, I did” [sketch of musical notes] etc. I saw that a number of times while a good member of the Capitol Hill Ward. Remember the times when we went walking after church. Also, how I could walk home with you from Sunday School & make a date for the evening. I can’t do that now but I can see you walking in dreams. I see you often as I remember you the times we got up early and went up some canyon. Remember the morning we walk up towards Parleys Canyon, and I kissed you right out on the prairie (I mean your mouth). Excuse me I don’t know my anatomy. What I meant to say was: we were standing out on the prarie [sic] in plain view of everybody for miles around, and I kissed, you. You see it was so early the people around were not up yet.
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by Cathy Gilmore | Jan 10, 2016 | Love Letters from the Archive
[This is the earliest dated letter between Dorothy Smith and Ellsworth Clark. They first met while attending the Capitol Hill Ward in Salt Lake City in early 1932. While they dated steadily in the Spring, it appears that Dorothy was not ready to settle down. You will note in this series there are many more letters from Ellsworth than there are from Dorothy. We presume she discarded many she did not want to be seen. We will continue to publish them chronologically. -CG]
At Home
9:55 P.M.
Dear Dorothy,
When one is lonesome what shall he do? Writing a note is one way out of the situation. Then you get this I suppose you will be busy doing something at home, but if I fail to write every thing that is in my mind at the present time, it would take quite a time as well as a lot of paper. I guess that is the reason for the pencil. If I were writing a formal note it would, of course, be a pen.
There are many things I would like to talk to you about. I sense that things multiple, good things as well as the other kind.
When my friend Earl was up this evening, he said that he would be up to my place Thursday afternoon. It might be noon even, and wondered if I would get someone and go to the show with him. Do you feel as if you would like to go? I would rather take you than anyone I know of. Of course I’m so fickle that I’m apt to change my mind over night. I suppose if this stationary could grin, it would do it now. However, you have made me do enough thinking lately to conclude that nothing ever is until it has happened.
I guess I really have something of a “eye opening” coming, because I am just a little selfish. I guess I must think that when I think a certain way that other parties should think in the same way. Isn’t it funny how a person thinks a thing over in his own mind until it seems as though the very thing should happen.
I’m wondering if the letter will bore you with its length? You see I have to write when I can’t see you and talk things around and about.
It’s just my luck not to see you tonight so that I could talk things over. I didn’t know that you expected to leave Mutual or I would have told you something before Mutual.
Dorothy, I wish you would really be frank and tell me if you wish that we could turn things backwards about a week and forget a few things that have happened. Then be frank and criticize my actions of late. I have made a dreadful mistake somewhere it seems. Tell me truly what is wrong with me and why I feel as I do. What’s the matter when I feel superbly happy at one time, and then in such a short time will be gloomy and full of wondering. It is some sort of compensation, or can it be helped.
I want above all to be fair to you. I realize I have taken up a lot of your time and very probably boxed you slightly. I see now, a little, why you feel as you do.
Here I am one fellow among others that you have been sweet enough to make happy, and then I go and spoil things by falling for you. Now am I right? I, of course, had hoped that you cared just a little extra for me. In fact I still believe that you do or you couldn’t have been so wonderful to me the (two) fullest months I have ever spent in my life.
If someone were to ask me what did you get out of your winter in Salt Lake and if I really told the truth I would answer, “Incidently I stored in a few facts of knowledge. I met new people, studied, worked a bit.” Then I would continue, “But the best thing of my whole year has been the companionship of a girl in whom I have seen those qualities of beauty without sophistication, goodness without a sense of good goodiness, pep and fun without the usual rowdiness and sometimes baseness. I am better because of knowing her. She has made me see the shallowness of a girl who looks upon life as a plaything and made me see a girl who has the ideals of a healthy Normal person. In her appreciation of Art she is tempered in her actions and yet is not afraid to show her individualism. To be afraid of life does not daunt her. She will go forward and, I hope stand firm in the way she has chosen. If she is slightly afraid she can overcome it by only not thinking of being afraid. When love comes her way she should not be afraid of it but she should surely know before giving her love to a person.” There are many other things I would say as long as the person I was talking to was imagining.
A sense of Balance is desirable in all things. The old Greeks were right in their Philosophy “All things in Temperance, None in Excess.” The person who can integrate his life so as to have work, Beauty & live in the right proportions is indeed a happy individual. Science has made great advances in the last few years. But with the growth of this has come a feeling of independence of actions. The person who throws all of his vitality into a scheme for temporal things is now likely to find that Science is an imposter and is setting down on him. The latest in Science is that there is a force which motivates things to do one thing equally well as another. Much of Science is exact and dogmatic it makes its slaves nicely tuned machines, but what of the personal thing in our [b?].
Dorothy, you have made me see a few things even if you have not spoken a word concerning them. I didn’t start this letter with the idea of writing much of this, but it has just slipped out. I hope you will not take me wrong and think that I am merely trying to flatter you or make you feel good. I have just let you see a little of my view points and something of my ideals, especially of a girl. I could have gone on with my description of a girl who (I believe) is my ideal.
She does not have to be a stunning Beauty. What I hope for in a girl is personality. Not the shining society dame but rather a girl who can laugh at little things, as a sense of humor when troubles are about and can understand that the real life is on our contort with our neighbor & friend and not in putting on the “High Hat”. This girl, if she has intelligence and personality will be beautiful without the prize from Atlantic City for having the most beautiful face.
I could go on forever I guess, but you will wonder if I’m all ideas or am full of sermons and such. Golly no! I will write in german if I do. But I won’t! There is something else I would rather say in German. and that is — dass Ich wünschte dan I wund met das I werd met ihnen nacht. Seiner Küssen sind sehr gut! Sie sind so schön und liebische [sic] dass Ich denke, du hast die bessen “Dorty” der welt. suens tränen zu dich. [written above German in Dorothy’s handwriting] that I […]_ that I were with you tonight […] You are so sweet and lovely that I think you are the grandest […] in the world. — I will probably do the same thing. However, I hope it is because of me and not another one. That would spoil things for me.
Gute Nacht! Du müss nichts vergessen Ich leibe dich.
Ellsworth “Muss things up” Clark
I think will roll my myself into this envelope and slip in and see you unawares. Then let you talk to someone about me. Wonder what kind of a thing I would hear. Probably a very common word would be “Nutty” or “funny”.
Well you could say worse things than that.
E.
It’s now 20 minutes to twelve
gute nacht!
I’m as bad in my letters as in my good nights at other times.
E. Again.
