TLS signed “Jerry,” two pages, 8.5 x 11, May 11, 1964. Letter to Terry (Frances Thierolf Glassmoyer). In full: “Dr. Helfferich’s invitation greatly pleased and touched me, and so does yours, O Member of the Messiah Chorus, and I don’t doubt that it must seem pretty oafish or dopey of me not to accept. My line of reasoning isn’t a thing of beauty, either, so I’ll refrain from filling up the page with it. But I am sorry to be such a poor fish about it, and I do know two good invitations when they come in. Not least, it would have delighted me tremendously to see Debbie and Nancy [Terry’s children] trying to cope with Peggy and Matthew [Salinger’s children]. I’m hoping we can make some other kind of engagement, meeting, sometime during the next few years. I don’t intend to be such a stick forever, and I really and truly would relish seeing you and Tom and the girls. Collegeville, too. Probably the last nice college town in existence…We live very near Hanover, N.H., you know, where Dartmouth is. An affluent township, loaded with cultcher [sic] and J. Press clothes in the shop windows.
I remember Dr. Helfferich’s name, but that’s all. I liked his letter, though, and found it entirely painful to write back and say no. That’s something about Rev. Sheeder. Would never have imagined anything like it. New York hotel rooms are the worst in the world, ought to be patrolled, but by whom or what, I know not. Peggy has poison ivy, Matthew has a virus, Claire [wife] has a cold, and I have six years’ work piled in stacks all over the floor. I’m just back from a peculiar but very pleasant week in London. My parents were there, and I had the great pleasure of rapping on my mother’s door, unexpected, early on a Sunday morning.
A very ancient appointment with her to tramp around London a deux, and I thought I’d better keep it, the way time is rushing by. That’s about my only news. I hope you and Tom and the girls are all well and happy. You sound fine, and I assume you are. Your own assumptions, by the way, about the wretched book you mention–that I’ll like it better in a hundred years–are pretty wet, all too frankly. A bad book, the work of hustlers and worse. I’d say that, I think, even if I hadn’t been the victim, the patsy. Whether or not I had it coming to me is another matter. Keep well, dear Terry. Best regards to Tom. All good wishes to the girls. And added thanks for that good and kind and really valued invitation.” In fine overall condition.
Accompanied by five related letters concerning the offered doctorate, including letters locating Salinger, as well as a copy of his response to the college’s president, which reads, in part: “Quite frankly, it would have seemed to me more than sporting of Ursinus to own up to any past connections with me whatever, let alone to remember me in this overwhelmingly generous way. I am very, very sorry to say, though, that I feel unfree to accept a degree of Doctor of Literature. I wish I could say why without burdening you with many or all my unregenerate and thoroughly tiresome convictions on the subject of the practicing fiction writer, his care, feeding, comportment, and so on. It seems a basic courtesy, of a sort, not to go into all that. I do most earnestly and wholeheartedly thank you, and I thank the present faculty and administration of Ursinus. It is possible for me not to add, willy-nilly, or simply from the heart, that my affection for Ursinus has remained very real, over the years.” Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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