---

Soundtrack: Burned Letters by Johannes Bornlöf.

---

Being a fan of “Her Letters to Lovecraft” by Bobby Derie over at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, I’ve decided to take on a similar approach for Sonia. It may come as a surprise to some that the Brown Digital Repository has letters from Samuel Loveman and Alfred Galpin independently addressed to Sonia. Due to the length of this study, (20 pages long, to be exact), it will be divided into two parts, with this month’s focus on Samuel Loveman and the next month on Alfred Galpin.

Samuel Loveman was a poet who was part of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA). Sonia was introduced to amateur journalism by James F. Morton, Jr. in 1917. While the exact date when Sonia entered the NAPA in particular is unknown, in April 1915, Samuel was praised by “El Imparcial” (H.P. Lovecraft) as NAPA’s “shining example” in Lake Breeze No. 19. (Collected Essays 1.30) It’s doubtful that Samuel and Sonia knew each other through the ranks of the NAPA prior to the latter meeting Lovecraft in 1921. It was through Lovecraft that Samuel was reinstated in the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA) in 1917. (Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner and Others p. 93.) Sonia joined the UAPA in July/August 1921 “after receiving United papers”. (Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner and Others, p. 331)

Lovecraft thought highly of Samuel, so much so, that he encouraged Sonia “to carry on a correspondence”. (The Private Life). According to Sonia, she didn’t immediately assent to the idea of corresponding with Samuel, at least not until she would meet him in person through one of her millinery trips. (The Private Life) She elaborated on her first meeting with Samuel:

When I visited Cleveland for the first time, I indeed, found S.L. to be all the fine things H.P. said about him. In fact H.P. must have had a great regard for him since he described his character and temperament in one of his stories called “Randolph Carter”, into which there is woven a substantial amount of subtle praise, and I might say, even a sort of admiration for him.

After my day’s work S.L. surprised me by calling together at a moment’s notice, almost, many of the Cleveland amateurs who were available, to meet in one of the reception rooms of the then quite new Staler Hotel. [sic] A very pleasant evening was spent at the end of which we all signed our names to one of the view-cards of Cleveland and sent it to H.P.

Sonia H. Davis, The Private Life of Howard Phillips Lovecraft manuscript, John Hay Library.

The exact date of this meeting is unknown. I can only speculate that it occurred at some point in August or September, for in September she had stopped by in Providence through one of her many traveling ventures for Ferle Heller. If we are to take her recollection above as factual, in terms of her having to meet him first in order to begin their correspondence, then it was certainly after their meeting at the Statler Hotel.

Transcription:

Cleveland, Ohio.

Dear Mrs [sic] Greene,

I send you under separate cover the two numbers of “The Saturnian”— there were to have been more but fate prevented.

I am truly sorry to tell you that there isn’t even a ray of hope in my coming east. I have been out of work since last January and the outlook, until Spring at least, is none too good. There are times when I get a kind of nostalgia for the Met. Museum which I visited once a few years— for the Rodins [sic] and the Italian paintings and the Greek fragments— then I forget it, or try to. Life in your city is infinitely richer than here and no doubt, there are more opportunities for isolation.

I’ve a big poem in preparation, a Greek subject, which Lovecraft is to have on completion. This is the story, if you don’t object hearing it: The Hermaphrodite, a figure symbolised and beloved by the ancients, leaves the city of Anthemus three thousand years ago to see the world and travel down the ages. His intention is to seek the Bacchanal procession and to fare with it in their rites and celebrations. He goes to the neighboring cities of Phrixae and Sybaris but there, the inhabitants worship a false god, and he is haled out of the city. He passes on until he comes to the temple at Nyssa and here he finds Bacchus with his Bacchantes, his fauns and his Satyrs fast asleep on the steps of that ancient place of worship. A voice awakes the god bidding him throw aside his despair and go to the marble city of Pergamon. Garlands of vine-leaves,grapes, [sic] and ivy are replaced, wine is drunken, their ecstasy begins again and they dance their way to their new destination. Before the gates of the city Bacchus admonishes his company. Many years ago, he tells them, I found myself an outcast before this very place. They scorned me and bade me depart again into the night. But all these years have I stored the memory of their insult and this is to be my revenge. You shall enter their city in disguise and once in the city, you shall quicken them with your joy and with the Dionysiac spirit. A watchman accosts them. They tell him they are priests to the goddess Cybele. He bids them enter, reminding them that many years ago he himself witnessed the expulsion of the god Bacchus on that very spot. But the next day a marvellous thing happened. The country in all that vicinity became blighted and sere— only the vines in the vineyards were laden with heavy, purple grapes. And whosoever drank became maddened and whosoever became maddened slew, so that in all the city none were there who remained sober…. but sanity was regained in the end. Once in the city the Bacchanals threw their vestments aside. A priest warns the populace. The Hermaphrodite in a fit of fury slays the priest. The company is massacred by the inhabitants of the city. The Hermaphrodite is buried alive, to fall into a dreamless sleep of nearly two thousand years. He is taken and disinterred by an Italian to a city in Italy. This is during the Rennaisance. [sic] A curious revival of the cult of worship for this figure takes place. Again, the Hermaphrodite is hidden in a chamber of the Ducal palace where he remains until modern times… This, in the rough, is the story. The poem is another.

It would be a pleasure to hear from you often.

Faithfully,

Samuel Loveman

1537 East 93 St., Suite 2.

---

Aside from the description of his epic poem, The Hermaphrodite, there isn’t much to glean from his letter. Evidently, Sonia had extended the New York offer to Samuel as well. When Sonia had visited Lovecraft, arriving in Providence on September 4, 1921, she wished “to have a sort of convention of freaks and exotics in New York during the holidays; inviting for two weeks such provincial sages as Loveman, The Chee-ild, and poor Grandpa Theobald!” (Selected Letters 1.153-154). “The Chee-ild” is Alfred Galpin. Even though Samuel initially declined her offer of coming to New York, Sonia did not give up on her vision:

On April 1, in response to Mrs. Greene’s repeated inducements, Loveman had hit N.Y. in quest of a commercial situation.

H.P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, May 18, 1922, Lord of a Visible World, p. 108.

If she couldn’t have her “convention of freaks”, at least in the way she envisioned it, she was inevitably able to convince Samuel to come to New York in hopes of finding work. Sonia must’ve kept a steady correspondence with Samuel through the end of 1921 and into early 1922 to have known his continual struggle in seeking an occupation. From the perspective of Lovecraft, it didn’t appear that Sonia had originally intended to invite him to New York until Samuel requested his presence:

Finding his hostess absent, he was so depressed that he almost went home immediately; but a local friend persuaded him to wait at an hotel. April 3 Mrs. Greene reached home and found the disconsolate one on her doorstep, as it were. She succeeded in slightly cheering him up, but not in getting him a job; and by the next evening he was about to depart in tenebrous discouragement. Mrs. Greene had turned her entire flat over to him, stopping at a neighbour’s herself, but not even that super-hospitality seemed likely to hold him. Then, since the bard had done me the undeserv’d honour of wishing I were there, Mrs. Greene called me up on the long-distance as an expedient for cheering her guest.

H.P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, May 18, 1922, Lord of a Visible World, p. 108-109.

Lovecraft’s side of the event does not take away from what Sonia wrote in her memoir, of having felt prompted “to invite both H.P. and S.L. to spend some time in New York, so that if H.P. never met a Jew before, I was happy to know that for the first time he would meet two of them, both of whom were favorably cultured and enlightened; and that the favored of the race is not limited to this infinitesimal number.” (The Private Life) Sonia was certainly working some angles with obvious good intentions. Perhaps, she didn’t intend to invite Lovecraft at first, but knowing Samuel’s request in wanting him visit all while knowing Lovecraft’s racist views toward Jews, she seized the opportunity with both hands and in a roundabout way, she had her “convention of freaks”.

While we know Lovecraft valued Samuel, it’s obvious that Sonia valued him just as equally as a friend and as a poet. She included his poem “A Triumph in Eternity” in the first volume of The Rainbow.

Transcription:

A Triumph in Eternity

SAMUEL LOVEMAN

“L’ angoscia della genti,

che son quaggiu, nel viso me depinge

quell pieta, che tu per tema senti.”

—Dante.

There rose from dreaming in a hueless spring,

A wind that gathered every silken flower,

And all its breath was fire and ruining,

And all its might fulfillment of a power,

Darkness, destruction, and the void that flings,

Thunder of night and imminence of wings;

And I, the sleeper, panged with indecision,

Of clasped joy and radiated fears,

Heard nought beyond the moaning of my vision,

Beyond the present bitterness of years.

And from their riven pomp and sundered dust,

Arose imperial in their print of flame,

OEdipus, [sic] Agamemnon ever just,

And hoar Tiresias wearily the same;

Beautiful souls, unquenched dooms of men,

Crying, “Who calls us from our anarch ken?

Is it the night hath ta’en your hope immortal,

O miserablest of earth’s unwary ones?

None gaze upon this adamantine portal,

Unblinded by the sapphire-lighted suns!”

And all those human seers that burned of old,

Soft-voiced, pleading, passionately mild,

With eyes illumined and with hearts of gold,

Uprose in desolation undefiled;

But o’er the pendulous and living night,

A spark upon the haunted deep, a light

Of wonder in their interlunar prison,

With thorns for joy and enmity for love,

Came he whom men have called divine and risen,

Ensandall’d and predestined from above.

For in his eyes the light of faith was gone,

And in his heart had hope long perished,

A wind that withered ’mid the stars at dawn,

Dismantled pity and eternal dread:

No lonelier soul in chaos moaned than he,

Since from that hour of central agony,

By heaven’s implicate and unknown wonder,

Of radiant fury ’gainst all humankind,

He bared his soul alone to fire and thunder,

In the ancestral darkness of the blind.

Only about him lingered yet the ghosts

Of little children loved and sung of yore,

Pellucid phantoms aureoled in hosts,

Bewildered sprites that sought his hand once more;

But sought in vain, for in his kindred eyes,

Lay broken vows and lustered memories.

Fain to forget and fain be unbeholden,

To mutability of alien years,

The flame above his head was bright and golden,

But on his cheek the savouring of tears.

Yet still he dreamed his hope would be fulfilled,

And in the furrowed night, august and pale,

The frozen heart of him again was thrilled,

By light of stars to mankind’s piercing wail;

To waken once again now still and furl’d,

The pagan beauty of another world,

Ere eld had made it gray, ere grief could follow,

To blot the lucency and hush the dream,

The music of that god which was Apollo,

The time elysian and the joy supreme.

But even as he ponder’d in the vast

And moaning wrack of sere oblivion,

A voice cried, “O my sovran Son! at last

Our perishable splendour lies undone;

We had no pity to our aim aligned,

But built our structure in the darkness blind,

Thou with thy dreams and I my might of making,

In fealty to noble faiths and trust,

Better a ruin, rather the forsaking,

Than bitterness that burnishes in dust!”

Still plots the Son ’mid heaven’s reflecting peace,

Still chides the Master from eternity,

And truths that burn and ills that may not cease,

Are graven as in fire on all that be;

Alas! for joy that promises no less,

For hope that ends in barren hopelessness,

Yet for this comfort that finds strength assurance,

Betwixt such lampless and such mystic foes,

The souls of us are pacified in durance,

By sleep that waits with darkness and repose.

1916

---

Then, in the second volume of The Rainbow, she included his poem, “A Letter to G— K—”, which was accompanied with his portrait.

Transcription:

A Letter to G— K—

Here, in the night, are winds that cry and keep

Their frozen clangor on the wall of sleep;

Autumn, in pyramidal splendour pales,

But in her heart the joy it is that fails

And fades. Not all her sun, rain, wrath, her cries,

The red lustration of a soul that dies

Uncherished and regretful, still’d in bronze,

Under the year’s immortal gonfalons—

Dare keep her with us. To her clarion call,

Is whispered moaning the confessional

That precedes Winter, when by way and flood,

Steals as a doom, the whiter brotherhood,

Unshriving and unshriven with a speech,

Deeper than heartache in the depth of each,

Alone, yet muted.

O my dearest friend!

Never the day that does not reach an end.

Never yet in the wild symphonic din,

But there came subtlier [sic] the cry within:

Give up…give over!

I am he who said:

Until this disquiet heart be quieted;

Until upon these eyes, this lyric brain,

Not even a winged vestige shall remain,

Save the one prophecying [sic] voice that spells,

Rebellion for this nethermost of hells;

Protest against the blind, the dumb, the driven,

Beggar’d on earth yet still denied their heaven;

Not until thither as a torch at tryst,

There perish in my soul the mutinist,

Shall I be silence!

I have heard it told,

Of a vast tower of perfume and of gold;

About a wayfarer as in a dream,

Who saw the molten spire and windows gleam,

Heard cry a voice in the enchanted night,

From lips like music, laughter and delight;

Something that pealed: Enter! for here at feast,

Thou, that of mankind art accounted least,

Shalt as a god sit, strange, imperial, lone,

Tremulous and sublunar on thy throne…

And entered in huge silence, but at dawn,

One who beside him stood, cried:

Now, begone!

A shadow art thou henceforth, even as these

That wrought so cruelly thy destinies—

Call thyself Pity, ever after!

I

Must be that wayfarer until I die;

Shall seek, and always seeking, never find

Wisdom in hearts, beauty in eyes stone-blind,

Then pass to one who passed before me…He,

Who so loved life, who so loved liberty,

That all the darkness in eternal space,

Shone golden on us with his godlike face,

In still, saturnian largess.

We remain,

Never to know his druid self again;

Nor on the water’s perilous rise and fall,

To hear soft-brimm’d, that voice of voices call

Lines from the sonnets he so-loved to speak,

Shakspere, [sic] Stagnelius, or some purple Greek,

Who sang to lyres by the Ionian sea,

Forgotten, save by him alone. But we,

When Spring begins out Dover-way,

shall find

The butterflies again upon the wind,

And see in all the blue sky, pink and white,

The apple-blossoms in their downward flight,

Hearken the birds upon the boughs that bend,

To sing the song that only Spring shall end,

And hear his soul, the cry in flowers and leaves,

Love me—but love me not, who pines and grieves!

---

We may only have Samuel’s single letter to Sonia, but it certainly wasn’t the last of their correspondence. Later in life, particularly after the death of Nathaniel A. Davis, Sonia began to pick up the forgotten pieces of her former life as Mrs. Lovecraft. She visited New York in September 1947 and was introduced to August Derleth by Frank Belknap Long. It was during this visit that Sonia “read a few pages” to Derleth “from my scribbled manuscript (it was almost illegible to myself).” (Sonia to Winfield Townley Scott, September 13, 1947, John Hay Library.)

This was the scribbled manuscript that would become The Private Life of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The trials that Sonia endured at the hand of Derleth needn’t be repeated, but it was during those instances that Sonia recommenced her correspondence with Samuel. In the Normal Lovecraft, Gerry de la Ree included in his article, “When Sonia Sizzled”, an unpublished letter and an excerpt of another letter from Sonia to Samuel. Although I dislike The Normal Lovecraft for its errors and overall undertone of Sonia’s portrayal (I get that it had a target market, but still…), the letter(s) in the article are worth sharing, especially since they were not part of the Sonia to Samuel lot of letters that sold in 2008, which I will elaborate on further in this post.

Enclosed is a letter from (August) Derleth. Do you think he is ‘shooting in the dark’? Bluffing? I answered, telling him as long as he has H.P.’s letters to his aunts he no longer needs my version of the story.

Sonia Davis to Samuel Loveman, Nov 30, 1947, The Normal Lovecraft, p. 28.

This is the first letter I have written beginning in 1948. I’ve been wondering whether Derleth has tried to make trouble between you and me! Of course, I really do not need to wonder, because he has written me that both you and (Frank Belknap) Long had denied my allegation that I ever supported H.P. Unless he had written to you and Long after I had read part of my story to him, I cannot believe that there was any reason for either Long or you making such a statement; especially since neither of you really knew to what extent I subsidized H.P. from 1922 to 1929.

Of course, his aunts sent him a few dollars a week, but that wouldn’t have kept in him postage stamps and writing material. Derleth is “mad” because I won’t let him have the letters and the story, so he’s been pretty rough on me, making allegations and inuendoes just to hurt me as much as possible, but I believe the end has been reached.

His great climax to try to spoil my Xmas holiday came when he sent me his last letter in time to reach me day before Xmas.

However, no matter what he has told you (if anything), if it’s a half-truth, it’s a whole lie. Perhaps, too, I may be mistaken; he may not have written you, but your silence makes me think that perhaps you prefer not to continue correspondence, and that I am to understand this by your silence.

I knew that when I was in Cleveland you managed to get a couple of weeks’ work for H.P.L. addressing envelopes for Dauber & Pine catalogues. He worked just 2 weeks at $17 a week, and hated it.

When we lived at 259 Parkside, his aunts sent him five dollars ($5) a week. They expected me to support him. When he moved to Clinton St., they sent him $15 a week. His rent was $40 a month. Food, carfare, and laundry and writing materials cost more than $5 a week. It was this “more” that I supplied. And when I came into town to do the firm’s buying, every two weeks, I paid all his expenses during those trips and for his entertainment also. And when I’d leave, I always left a generous sum with him of which some of you knew, but none knew just how much. However, when he returned to Providence, his aunts allowed him $15 a week and sometimes he’d eke out a bit from Weird Tales and from a few revisions.

But when I came to Providence and lived with him there, I again carried all the expenses, even inviting the aunts to dine with us every evening.

When I left Providence because there was not a large enough job there for me, I returned to Brooklyn, and opened my own hat shop (it was when I had my apartment on 16th St) on 17th St. corner Cortelyon Road. He spent several months away from Providence, but very little of those two or three months were spent with me. He went to Philadelphia and several other places; Newburgh, Albany, and other cities along the Hudson, winding up his trip at Vrest Orton’s in Yonkers, where he spent more time. For all this I paid.

His aunts sent him a small stipend, not enough to travel. Yet Derleth all but called me a liar in actual words. I’d send you the letter but it is really too dreadful to contemplate.

Here, however, is what he said: “You told me when you met me that you were the sole support of H.P.L. from 1922 or thereabouts for ten years thereafter. That was not true and is not true. Long, Loveman and others have denied it, and Lovecraft’s letters indicate otherwise. You told me other things I tried to verify without being able to do so about yourself.”

But he does not state what I told him about myself that he tried to verify. I think he is shooting in the dark, just to try to scare me or hurt me. I don’t believe you told him anything, since you did not see him when he was in New York. Or did you? I’m not writing Long to find out what he said, for really nothing matters now. Derleth has made other accusations that I do not even understand. But now I’m out of the “Hornet’s Nest” I’ll see to it that I’ll not be inveigled again.

Perhaps I’ve made a mistake to do so; I am not sure. Others may seek to know of my life with H.P., but I think I’ve learned a good lesson. That page of the book is closed. If I ever refer to it again it may be in sheer self-defense, if Derleth intends to make unwarranted statements about me. It was an evil hour when I met him. I write all this because I have an idea he is trying to make trouble between you and me. I shall probably hear from him again although I haven’t answered his last letter. Forgive me if you can for such an effusive outpour. But I like to know whether I am right or wrong. This, too, really doesn’t matter, except that I don’t like to “hang” in mid-air. Please share the quotations with Long and whoever else you wish.

Sonia Davis to Samuel Loveman, Jan 1, 1948, The Normal Lovecraft, p. 29-30.

The following letter is from the Brown Digital Repository, and a response to her letter above.

Transcription:

Jan. 4, 1948

Dear Sam:

I forgot to state that the information I gave you regarding H.P.L’s lack of finances is not to be given to Derleth* (* i.e. I don’t want D. to know about the $15.00 a week + the 5.00 a week.) It is quite possible that Derleth is purposely irritating me to compel me to either defend myself or give him, in this way, the information he seeks. He’d probably love to have the letter I wrote you, therefore I beg of you to tell Belknap, when sharing it with him, to say nothing about this to Derleth.

In his Marginalia he is all wrong in stating how much older I am than H.P. also that our divorce was the result of HP’s inability to write for money or his lack of desire to write for money. None of this is true. I earned a handsome salary at the time and provided many things for him. I did not leave him on account of non-providence, but chiefly on account of his harping hatred of J—s.

This and this alone was the real reason. In fact, I believe he wrote to his aunts about it, but since nowhere in the “Marginalia” is this fact mentioned (unless Derleth has it in those letters of H.P.’s aunts, of which Derleth boasts) it is quite possible that the letters referring to Jews and HP’s hatred of them, may have been destroyed.

The “Marginalia” is full of mistakes and full of mis-statements, [sic] that I have rebutted in my story, which while written, will probably never see the light. The Marginalia is sadly lacking in many facts of which I alone am aware.

I do not mean to trouble you with my opinions regarding Derleth’s omissions and commissions, but facts should be right and straight; and not guessed at.

But now Derleth will never know, unless he changed his abominable tactics.

As Ever

S.H.

---

How Samuel responded to her allegations in these letters to him is virtually unknown. It is safe to say, however, that his silence was a not preference to discontinue his correspondence with Sonia. Life does happen, and occupations can at times sever the ability for generous fellowship. As much as Sonia claimed that nothing mattered, she was genuinely hurt by Derleth’s petty tactics and needed a friend to put her worries at ease. Samuel would defend her reputation as the former Mrs. Lovecraft in his article “On Gold and Sawdust. Although Samuel denounced Lovecraft after learning of his racism, (very likely from Sonia) it is clear that Samuel and Sonia shared a genuine friendship and a mutual trust that lasted for decades.

While the University of Delaware has in their possession the correspondences of Samuel Loveman, not a single letter from Sonia is in that collection. On February 22, 2008, a lot of 22 letters from Sonia to Samuel sold for $1,195 through Heritage Auctions.

Sadly, none of the letters are from the period of when Sonia was married to Lovecraft. Nevertheless, the catalog of letters are worth mentioning:

• Autograph Letter Signed “S”, with envelope, two pages, September 14, 1947, Hotel Chicagoan stationery, ink.
• Typed Letter Signed “Sonia”, two pages, October 26, 1947, plain paper.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, eight pages, November 1, 1947, plain paper, ink.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, two pages, March 3, 1948, plain paper, ink.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, four pages, June 18, 1949, plain paper, pencil.
• Typed Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, one page, August 9, 1949, plain paper.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, three pages, April 24, 1950, plain paper, ink.
• Typed Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, two pages, August 16, 1950, plain paper.
• Typed Letter Signed “Sonia”, one page, August 18, 1950, plain paper.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, two pages, October 29, 1950, plain bifolia paper, ink.
• Typed Letter Signed “SHD”, one page, July 26, 1951, plain paper.
• Typed Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, two pages, August 21, 1951, plain paper.
• Typed Letter Signed “S”, with envelope, two pages, August 29, 1951, plain paper. Includes a handwritten postscript, also signed “S”.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope one page, September 1, 1951, plain bifolia paper, ink. Accompanied by a one-page Typed Letter Signed from Spanish historian and novelist Adolph de Castro to Sonia.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, one page, October 31, 1951, plain paper, ink.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, two pages, September 25, 1954, plain paper, ink.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, four pages, June 24, 1966, plain paper, ink.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, three pages, July 19, 1968, plain paper, ink.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, two pages, July 30, 1968, plain paper, ink.
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, one page, August 10, 1968, plain paper, ink. Accompanied by a change of address card from Sonia to Loveman.
• Typed Letter Signed “Sonia”, one page, undated, plain paper. Second page of a two page letter (no first page).
• Autograph Letter Signed “Sonia”, with envelope, one page, undated [envelope postmarked October 27, 1966], to Alyce Loveman, plain paper, ink.

That is 8 years of correspondence set within 22 letters, and that’s not even counting the ones that are missing from the period of 1921, or simply all the letters that are just lost between all the years of their acquaintance. That’s 8 years of information we’re missing out on to further verify accounts in Sonia’s life, and even Samuel’s own life. We can only hope that one day we shall see those 22 letters again, and continuing to hope that a generous soul will acquire them with the intention of finally revealing their contents publicly.