Undated Florence Deshon letter

This is a transcription of one of the Florence Deshon letters. It is undated, but directly follows the Oct. 15, 1920 letter. It is mostly likely the letter that Deshon urges Eastman to send back to her, saying it is the letter she wrote when she broke her contract with Goldwyn.

Your letters have turned colder, the last drop of warmth you had in your heart for me was frozen by your great disappointment. But think of me. It is my disappointment, not one I can sympathize with in another, but my own which is with me all the time. I [?] began the race for success so well equipped, [now?] stand completely stripped with [the?] vision before my eyes but one of mediocrity. II cannot force it. I cannot give up all my bright hopes. I would die first. Utter utter despair fills my heart. It is myself I have to live with always it was myself I wanted to love. How can I care about this dark girl. She is no longer lovely to me, no longer beautiful. Do not think I mean I did not love you dearest. That is not so, but I cannot be happy with you unless I am happy about myself. You understand that don't you. I am not coming back to the little home on the hill. I have given up that dream completely. I cannot go back.

You do not have to answer the letter. you do not need to write me at all. It makes no difference.

                                                                                    Florence.

You were ever the brightest vision in my dreams.

On the verso of this letter:

1920

The "humble letter" written where Goldwyn broke his contract with her.

I decided to transcribe this letter because it is such a different tone from the ones we have read so far of Deshon's. There is an obvious sadness that pervades the letter, a pessimism and nihilism, even. It seems that there was a dramatic event which would have influenced her to write such a letter to Eastman. In the Oct. 15, 1920 letter, she alludes to her breaking her contract with Goldwyn, which may have been the even that has made her so depressed.

On of the more interesting points is that in the Oct. 15, 1920 letter, she states that she had broken the contract with Goldwyn, yet whoever wrote the part on the verso has put that Goldwyn has broken his contract with Deshon. It's much like a bad breakup in which both parties claim to have been the one to end it. The breakup analogy would also explain why she is so utterly stricken by sadness in this letter, saying that she had once had "bright hopes," but now is a "vision" of "mediocrity." We do not have Eastman's response to this particular letter, but we do know that they did still write one another since in the Oct. 15, 1920 letter, she writes to Eastman, she requests that he send back this one. Perhaps she felt ashamed of her depression and thought it better to take back all of this despair that she had written on the page. She did not want Eastmen to concentrate on this "dark girl" side she had.

This letter seems important in our view of Eastman and Deshon's relationship. It gives Deshon another dimension and it informs our assumptions about why she may have taken her own life later on. The fact that Deshon asks Eastman for this letter back (and we can only assume that he did send it back to her) says that she is self-conscious of how others may view her mental health. This letter is different in that it renders her emotions strongly and openly to a man she no longer felt cared for her at the moment.