Skip to Content
 

Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, June 22, 1938

The Sulgrave

Park Avenue and 67th Street

New York

22.VI.38

I am so moved by your coming up from Washington to see me off, beloved Mildred, that I think it’s safer for me to tell you so by letter than by word of mouth, so tho’ I hope to see you this morning, I’m sending you this line to greet you on return to Washington.

It was a great joy to find the Oaks so settled, as compared with four years ago, and so nobly enriched with the things we care for. Seeing them at the Oaks, I’ve again and again had the conviction come over me that I never would have had such a thrill of happiness from them had they come to rest in any other place—even Antigny, for in the nature of things Antigny can’t be hoped to last as the Oaks may last, and there’s something mysterious but powerful in that feeling that one has been associated in an enterprise meant to continue long beyond one’s own span of days.

I wish I might be there when MADBZ.1938.62. arrives. I trust it may be possible for find a good place, with proper light, for her and the round EmperorBZ.1937.23. in the music-room.

I’m sending you (don’t return) a line from Hayford which has just reached me (delayed)—I think you’ll like to have this additional echo of his enthusiasm for what you’ve done.

Fondest love and blessings dearest Mildred—and it must be á bientôt, but really soon.

R. T.

[Enclosure]

16 VI 38

Dear PeterPeter was Royall Tylers nickname.

Hope you’ve had mine of 15 and 13. Very glad to hear DO* has the BV.“Blessed Virgin.” BZ.1938.62. I’ll ask Mrs. Sessions, when the time comes, for shots of it, and of other things.

D.O. certainly has a marvellous collection now. It’s nice having it scattered about and tucked away a bit everywhere so unostentatiously, but Christi! .. What a “medieval” room they could have, with just that, arranged “to show everything they’ve got”!

I wish we’d had their most interesting gold “courtier” or “high priest”,Probably BZ.1936.46. and other things, for T III.L’art byzantin. Although written, volume three was not published.

Remember me to Winlock,Herbert Eustis Winlock (1884–1950), an American Egyptologist and archaeologist. Winlock headed the Egyptian art department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, between 1932 and 1939. Dimand,Maurice Sven Dimand (1892–1986), an Austrian Islamicist art historian who specialized in Coptic art and Islamic textiles and carpets. He joined the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is 1923 as a research assistant in the Egyptian department, and in 1933 he became the first curator of Near Eastern Art, a position he held until his retirement in 1959. Brummer, Kelek, and Freddy King,Frederic Rhinelander King (1887–1972), an American architect who, in 1934, had established a partnership in New York City with Marion Sims Wyeth (1889–1982). In 1960, Mildred Barnes Bliss and Robert Woods Bliss would commission him to design a garden library with a first-floor rare book room at Dumbarton Oaks. etc.

“OK” (γ a bon)“It’s good.”

as ever

Hp

Don’t forget the Metro Silks and the important panel (“Vlllth”).These silks have not been identified.

*i.e. The Oaks [in pencil in Royall Tyler’s writing]

 
Associated Artworks: BZ.1936.46; BZ.1937.23; BZ.1938.62