To Leonebel Jacobs [Letter 402]

September 3, 1949

Dear Leonebel:

Thank you for the lovely letter you sent us just as we were leaving New York. I think that your good wishes worked, because we had a wonderful trip back, with no flat tires and no trouble of any kind. It was better than I had hoped and gave me more than I expected to find for my new novel.

Now that we are safely back home, I want to thank you once more for your wonderful attitude toward us and for the party which you gave for us. You were one of the very few people whom I consider a real friend of THE FOUNTAINHEAD. I cannot consider those who are not friends of my book as real friends of mine no matter what feelings they may profess to have toward me. Which means that I know very few people whom I like, and you are one of them.

I am sorry that Mr. Luce let us down, but I will always be grateful to you for your attempt in regard to him. Strange things went on in the Luce offices after you left. A reporter from Time Magazine came to interview me and was very favorable to THE FOUNTAINHEAD—then I was notified that the interview would not be published. Life Magazine called my publishers for a photograph of me for their “Life Congratulates Department”—then informed them that the photograph would not be used. You can guess what was going on behind the scenes. There appears to be a civil war going on between two factions in that office. It looks like the fight between good and evil and, so far, it is the evil side which Mr. Luce has allowed to win. Well, as I firmly believe, the victim of it will be himself, not you or I.

I hope that you might succumb to the temptation of coming here for Carol’s wedding. I would love to see you. If you don’t come, I will look forward to the time when I finish my new novel and come East again.

I was very intrigued by the sentence in your letter about Frank’s portrait being a combination of three persons. Would you tell me more exactly what you meant? I have always regarded it as a portrait of two persons, but who is the third?[*]

With love from both of us,

*Jacobs’ subsequent letters contain no answer to AR’s question, but Jacobs visited AR in California a month later.