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West Virginia University
MORGANTOWN, W. VA.
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
Box 777

April 8, 1944

Dear Mr. Hayden:

I am sending you a copy of JOHN HENRY. I am glad to know that you have found it helpful in your work.
I might make one suggestion. I think I used the term "pagan beauty" for John Henry's woman at the Big Bend. At all events I meant to use it, I meant it to carry its full force. She was medium size, redheaded, and full of the joy of life. She was a real woman, extraordinary, the goddess of the camp, any camp where real men are, and I hope you will not misunderstand her and conclude that she is a composite of the faded echoes in the Henry tradition. I was not able to say just what became of John Henry, but I may sometime write an account of what became of his woman, his woman at Big Bend Tunnel.

If you have occasion to include this woman in your paintings I hope she will look like something fit to go home to when the day's work is over and the night's work is ready to begin, and such a woman is not altogether a matter of clothes.

I should like to make another suggestion, if I may. I know little about the art of painting of course, especially modern painting, but I have an idea that Henry's hammer might well create a number of problems for the painter. I have yet to see a picture of Henry holding his hammer in his hands, or swinging it in driving steel, that has the slightest touch of reality in it.

I have not mentioned these matters because I want to interfere with your art. You have yourself and other better judges than I am to satisfy. But I have always hoped that I might some day see a painting of John Henry, his hammer, and his woman, and in that hope I have not thought of the artist's idea or synthesis.

I don't recall that much has been done recently on the Henry tradition. Paul Green and Roark Bradford each apparently in their stage productions failed totally, doubtless because they loaded the tradition with good ideas and other such tripe.

I send you my best wishes and regards.

L. W. Chappel
L. W. Chappell.