April 2, 1961

Dear Dorothea,

I forgot to tell you in the letter I just mailed that I have met the sweetest boy! Well, I'm not sure others would use that term to describe him, but to me he is quite adorable, though he carps and complains all the time and says something unsettling to me every time we see each other. The other day he told me I was looking "blowsy," all because I wore a handkerchief to chorus practice due to having just washed my hair. Then this afternoon he told me that I could stop the fluttery Nicole Diver act, for this was a benighted college in the provincial South, not the French Riviera. And I haven't even read that book or scarcely any Fitzgerald at all! At any rate I told him he was a typical embittered, disillusioned _scion_ of the fallen southern gentry--a Quentin Compson type, if you like (I wasn't going to let him get away with making literary references without coming back with one myself)--and thank God I didn't have to carry around any aristocratic baggage of that kind, since my family were all humdrum shopkeepers and clerks. (Of course that isn't strictly true: your mother can't be classed in that phylum!) He got red in the face and couldn't come back with anything smart! Of course that made me like him more.

Oh, I haven't even told you how he looks. Well, he's no Tab Hunter! Very thin and tall, and already going bald at the crown of his head, wears glasses (dark and horn-rimmed). But he has the sweetest long-fingered hands (today I could hardly keep myself from grasping one of them when I was sitting next to him in the caf) covered with soft brown hair and he has green eyes! I'm not lying--they really are green. Today we were walking by the chapel in full sun and I looked carefully and made sure. Earlier I had thought they might be merely hazel, a much more prosaic shade. But they really are green. And he has a full mouth that turns up at the edges a little. Very aristocratic looking--a cleft chin too! I would really hate him if I didn't like him so much!

We're singing Elijah, and none too well. The sopranos are very off. The alto, some lady from town, is wobbly. She ruined Jezebel's solo. Dan says--did I mention his name is Daniel?--he says the part where Elijah contends with the priests of Baal is so poignant; it makes him sympathize with the Baal worshippers, who are the losers, he says, in the "God sweepstakes." Dr. Whaley was red-faced with annoyance at that remark. Dan says Elijah is like a big juicy rich Victorian fruit cake: dense but without any real substance, and no nutritional value. I love it though. I cried at the end during our last run-through, and lost my place. Did I tell you that Dan has the sweetest baritone voice? I told him that he ought to be singing Elijah himself but he says he doesn't have the heft, with his "feeble Pelleas voice."

Must go now--I have a trig exam to study for, and I need to get in the shower before all the hot water is gone. (Some of these girls, these damned horse-riding debutantes-to-be-girls, take forever to bathe.) I'm not going to appear at practice with my hair wet again! Tell me more about life in New York, and about _Johann_--I'm dying to hear what comes of that! I don't think I would lend him any more money, and as for him sleeping on your daybed--well, my dear girl, take care!

Love,

Pat