This file contains photocopies and transcripts of two letters from Merton to Reg Marsh a year before Merton went to university at Cambridge.
Reginald Marsh was a artist and friend of Owen Merton, Thomas' father and another artist. Unlike Owen, who tended toward watercolor landscapes, Marsh is often considered of the Social Realist school, reporting in detail urban life in the 1930's through his paintings and drawings. Merton writes to Marsh in April of 1932 while on Easter holiday from Oakham in Germany and writes again from Oakham. He would spend most of the summer of 1933 at Marsh's studio in Greenwich Village in New York. (Source: The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton by Michael Mott, pp. 61 and 73.)
Please click here for general restrictions concerning Merton's correspondence.
See also Volume 29, No. 3 of The Merton Seasonal for published versions of both letters in this file.
If the person in correspondence with Merton has full text records in the Merton Center Digital Collections, there will be a numeric link to them below.
This Record Sub-Group is not divided into Series and is arranged chronologically.
Click icons for links: ✓="Published | Library Record", ✉="Scanned" | 🗷="Scanned, Viewable Only at Merton Center"
# | Date | From/To | First Lines | Pub ✓ | Notes |
| y/m/d | Merton | | Scan ✉ | |
1. |
1932/04/06 (#01) |
HLS[x] from Merton |
I have gravitated here by way of an Easter Holiday. I had a pretty normal athletic term. I gained |
|
Merton's meager athletic honors / controversy over his caricatures in the school magazine / a lousy time in Brussels / Cologne and impressions of the German people / Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
«detailed view» |
2. |
1932/04/06 (#02) |
transcript from Merton |
I have gravitated here by way of an Easter Holiday. I had a pretty normal athletic term. I gained |
|
Merton's meager athletic honors / controversy over his caricatures in the school magazine / a lousy time in Brussels / Cologne and impressions of the German people / Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
«detailed view» |
3. |
undated/no/no (#01) |
TLS[x] from Merton |
Excuse my writing to you on the Editorial Typewriter. Thanks ever so much for your welcome epistle. |
|
job as a prefect for the younger boys at Oakham / French literature of the classical period / work as an editor of the magazine / hopes of "emancipation at Cambridge, or Oxford" / Michael Arlen's Men Dislike Women / comments on being forced to write on the death of Dido
«detailed view» |
4. |
undated/no/no (#02) |
transcript from Merton |
Excuse my writing to you on the Editorial Typewriter. Thanks ever so much for your welcome epistle. |
|
job as a prefect for the younger boys at Oakham / French literature of the classical period / work as an editor of the magazine / hopes of "emancipation at Cambridge, or Oxford" / Michael Arlen's Men Dislike Women / comments on being forced to write on the death of Dido
«detailed view» |
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