In the letter below, Dawn Powell writes home to one of her closest friends, Margaret de Silver, from her visit to Haiti, where she was traveling with fellow novelist John Dos Passos.
To Margaret de Silver
[Port-au-Prince, Haiti]
Thursday, March 1, 1948
Dearest Maggie,
This is a very easy place to feel at home in immediately–largely because it simply has no connection with anything or anyplace else in the world. Even Traveler Passos says so. It is easy for a lone person, male or female, particularly here at the Oloffson, which is a huge rococo rambling palace with barely a dozen people wandering around very chummily. Dos got me the prize suite– too luxurious for description– for $9 a day, fine meals, unlimited service. It is the corner suite–vast porch on both sides overlooking the entire city and bay and mountains so at last I am in the sunlight.
The permanents here are very fine–the customary Somerset Maugham cast: retired General Bradfords wife of Washington; a Navy widow of 50; a handsome Mrs. Ford here on Haitian art affairs from a Chicago museum and given to vanishing with suave young Haitians; a ship’s doctor who settle here 20 years ago; the proprietor and owner of many Port-au-Prince businesses, young Maurice De Young, handsome, age 29, of Dutch Descent (and a baron, I believe), and his black partner Maurice Morency–and this week the Fleet, so there is much drinking of rum, riding in jeeps through the bazaars and other warlike activities,
The Eben Givenses have a suite that is really a separate house–two bedrooms, living room, bath and porch and meals for all three and service for $16 a day. Rum is better than Cuban–at 90 cents a quart. There is no way of buying anything you forgot– such as a bathing cap, a safety pin, etc. My laundry just arrived from the native laundress–negligees, all sorts of fancy stuff–80 cents. When you go downtown two or three young Haitians usually attach themselves and courteously lead you wherever you like to go, intercede for you with shopkeepers, and oddly enough this is sheer friendship. It is really warm but delightful breezes–I sleep like dead. Dos has a huge room–in fact a complete house over by the Givenses’. He is staying till Friday. We went to dinner at a Haitian Restaurant–wonderful conch stew, etc. Mr. William Bullitt is at the Embassy, which is lavishly entertaining for the Fleet. Of all things, Maurice De Young here was Malcolm Lowry’s boon companion during their trip here (same hotel). And little Truman Capote had this suite when he was here. Esther [Andrews] and party are due after several false starts.
This is a wonderful place for a frustrated frogophile, because these people are delighted with your French efforts and you find yourself carrying on without the slightest uneasiness, reading your French newspaper and making up words and skipping tenses like a real Creole. I have bought Coby some French books–Sartre’s plays and the Lettres de Mlle. de Sospinasse for no reason except Dos recommended them. We swim at the pool (the only one around) at 12 with rum punches and visiting firemen. It is a fine place and atmosphere for work and shakes all of your ideas upside down. The Fleet had been in just 30 minutes when an army group landed in out bar, and one colonel turned out to be Dos’s cousin-in-law, Col. Shuler, married to a Katherine Dos Passos in Honolulu who had met Dos on his way to the Pacific for Life. Also Eben says on their rugged eight-hour expedition to the Citadel two young ladies coming down the mountain on muleback cried out, “Why, you are John Dos Passos!” and it seems they were on some New York magazine.
There is a fascinating little hotel in the town–Hotel Excelsior, rather New Orleans-looking–that I would like someone to try out for me. I’m told it has the only hot water in town and the only good plumbing–room and meals $18 a week. It is down in the town center and probably very hot and maybe for men only but it looks very clean and attractive. Dos and I lavishly entertained his cousin and troops on my balcony and next day Dos and General Bradford and some marines who have attached themselves all went fishing (got nothing). Dos is working very hard. So is Phyllis [Duganne] and so am I. The marines plaintively saw the writers lounging around with rum punches and swimming pools. When do they write?, they cried–let us in on this racker. They had spent a drunken evening with Dorothy Parker and her beau in St. Thomas en route here–said she looked older than God and was a mess but not as much a mess as her boyfriend who they finished off. Their story on Miss Powell in Port-au-Prince will probably be the same.
My, this is a wonderful place and I am almost sure you would like it. I doubt if Coby would for some reason. I haven’t seen any beaches.
Love,
Dawn
The General calls me “Water Baby” because he claims I look like the illustrations in his Kingsley Book. I better look into this. I may get sore.