Free The Headmasters Papers by Richard A. Hawley

qualities must be genuine, perhaps even valid.
    Please find enclosed our modest honorarium. By no means does it represent the extent of our appreciation. It comes with our warm regards, though, and an open invitation to return soon.
    My good wishes,
    John O. Greeve
    13 October
    Mr. Robert Miravelli
Miravelli and Associates
2490 Boylston Street
Boston, Massachusetts
    Dear Mr. Miravelli,
    I am sorry not to have responded sooner to your letter of last week, but there has been much more than the usual crush of work here.
    I am decidedly not in a position to have my portrait painted at this time. Traditionally, I believe, the directors of a school, or at any rate someone other than the subject himself, commissions a portrait of the headmaster. In this regard, I bow to tradition.
    Sincerely,
    John O. Greeve
    15 October
    Mr. Dewey Porter
Chairman, Seven Schools Conference
Adelbert School
Eavesham, Connecticut
    Dear Dewey,
    Thanks for your letter and for the proposed agenda for November.
    If I hadn’t been preconditioned by what I found to be an incomprehensibly dim correspondence from Fred Maitland, I think your response to our tiff with St. Ives would have surprised me. Of course we would be glad to talk about it; we look forward to it. But we are not in a position to reconsider our decision to drop St. I. from our schedule, at least for a year. The reasons are pretty clearly set down in the correspondence I sent you. At any rate, we have already adjusted our own schedule. Deed’s done.
    The question you posed—do we intend to drop all opponents whose sportsmanship falls below standards—is an interesting one, and I choose not to take it rhetorically. I would certainly like to drop opponents, all of them if it came to that, who refuse to acknowledge play as blatantly dirty and unsportsmanlike as we experienced in our opener with St. I. That is not a fine distinction. What I wanted from Fred was just an  acknowledgement,  so that we could address our respective teams and schools appropriately. When this is no longer an obvious course of action, I for one am ready to drop interscholastic athletics altogether.
    Nothing could be further from my intentions than to “one-up” St. I. If anything, we are quite publicly one-down. We lost the game, we lost the brawls, and, for the time being, we have lost a time-honored athletic rival.
    I wish you had seen the game, Dewey.
    Sorry not to be more helpful. I look forward to seeing you soon.
    Best,
    John
    16 October
    Mr. and Mrs. Frank Greeve
14 Bingham Drive
Tarrytown, New York
    Dear Val and Frank,
    Thanks for your good, warm letter.
    I don’t think your visit tired Meg. I think it stimulated and touched her, although she has a hard time registering that through the discomfort. She is not distressed by the people who visit, but by being unable to respond to them appropriately. But it’s still Meg in there, and she loves both of you fundamentally.
    It’s been a bad week, to tell the truth. Meg is very uncomfortable, depressed, and unable to sleep. Part of this I am sure has to do with the hospital. I know I am no one to speak, with my polite humanities education and having come of age before the technological behemoth of modern medicine, but Meg’s regimen in the hospital is patently hopeless. Everything about the place is a confirmation of her disease. Except for her flowers, redolent of pity and utterly alien in the off-white, waxy confines of a hospital cell, there is nothing to engage eye, ear, or imagination, nothing except the hospital’s own business. There is no privacy, no quiet. The rate for the room alone, without medicine and specialists’ fees, is $325 per day. The only responsible alternative is to have her home here with round-the-clock nurse’s care. This course, which may be more humane, is less expensive, but not coverable by medical insurance. It would break our little bank to bring her home, but I am glad to do