- Date: Tuesday, 18 January 1938, about noon
- Written at: New York, New York
- Stationery: Hotel Taft, 7th Ave. at 50th St., New York
- From: Joseph “Joe” Sharmer
- To: Ruby
- Condition: Complete — 2 pages; envelope not found
Each page of the original is shown beside its transcription. Click a page to enlarge it.
PAGE 1
Tuesday —
Jan 18th
My Lover:—
Just came in at noon & here is your most wonderful letter — Honey there is not a thing in the world that makes a man feel better than to know the person he loves loves him — I am full of pep & wrote you last night & will again tonight — The sun is shining today but the temperature is 6° above so it doesnt mean much — I am busy as Hell trying to finish here because I want to get home to you Dear — I love you so much I cant stand it much longer — I have some good leads out & as soon as I hear from them or close the deals I am starting back to the sweetest little girl in all the whole wide world. There is no use to wire because you should get my letter today so not hearing
PAGE 2
assures you I have written. Dont phone Honey it costs to much. I talked to J S B for $18.00 & besides S N would listen in anyway.
Honey Lover I am sure glad you look at things as you do you are so sweet but I am still damaged & not good enough for you. Ill love you until the end. You are so dear and understanding but in the future ASK ME and Ill tell you all so the busy bodies cant make a mountain out of nothing. I have no intentions of leaving you. I can tell you that right now Dear — If I do move on — As soon as I am settled some little girl has to move to. So Now Ill mail this now — More tonight
All my love Dear
Joe
Keep them coming to the Taft
Notes & context
The date. Joe dated it only “Tuesday — Jan 18th.” In January 1938 the 18th fell on a Tuesday, and he was still at the Taft, so the year is certain. He says he wrote the night before (Monday the 17th); that letter has not been found.
Getting ready to come home. Three weeks earlier Joe expected to be at the Taft “about 10 days yet.” Now he is “busy as Hell trying to finish here,” waiting on a few leads before starting back to California.
“Dont phone Honey it costs to much.” A call to J.S.B. had just cost him $18.00. “S N” would have listened in on the line — who S N was is not known, perhaps someone at the local telephone exchange.
“ASK ME.” Ruby had evidently heard talk from “the busy bodies” and written to him about it kindly; Joe asks her to come to him directly next time. What the talk was about isn’t known.
“Some little girl has to move to.” He had said nearly the same thing on 2 January — “if I leave P. — some little girl is going along with me” (Your Special, Mailed New Year’s Eve). Joe and Ruby were married in Kingman, Arizona, on July 5, 1938.
What came next. Within an hour and a half he had mailed this one and begun another, You Were Made for Me, and that evening he kept his promise of “more tonight” with Top Hats and Orchids, written after watching the opening of Billy Rose’s Casa Mañana. The next evening’s letter, A Light in Your Mother’s Window, was written after a much harder day.
