Deep feelings have never had adequate speech

I love letters that concern old Hollywood friendships. Here is a heartfelt letter from Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to Clifton Webb, written in September 1931. Webb had just visited Fairbanks and his wife Joan Crawford and Fairbanks eloquently thanks him, calling Webb's stay "a welcome rain after a long drought". Joan was a close friend of Webb's too and I've also included a letter from her to him written around the same year. 

Incidentally, Clifton Webb was very loved in Hollywood. He and his mother Mabelle regularly hosted parties visited by Hollywood's finest. Webb maintained close friendships with a number of Hollywood stars including Humphrey Bogart, a letter concerning theír friendship can be read here.

Source: international autograph auctions

Transcript:

Cliffie:

I have done many difficult things in my life but as I sit down to write this I am only to [sic] cognizant that this letter is presenting unprecedented hurdles. Because of this do be tolerant of my writing by typewriter rather than by hand. You couldn't even read it, I am sure, the other way.

Deep feelings have never had adequate speech and this is no exception. We have thousands of words at our disposal and a comfortable assortment of adjectives but when we have something of deep import such as telling a friend how grateful one is to him for his friendship and thanking him for many things that must go throughout infinity unrepaid, they all become as useless and futile as Christ's death or a Nun's twitch to a eunuch. 

Your visit here has done much for me. Never have I had such a good time. I am indefinitely obligated to you for everything. Your stay was like a welcome rain after a long draught [sic]. Only on leaving you have left with us a memory too wonderful and too profound to be so inadequately described as that.

If brevity is the soul of wit then silence must of necessity be the soul of emotion and by that same token I am without further words.

Nominating myself as a committee of one representing the Lady and your most humble, residing at Webbfair (if you remember) I extend to you the deepest and most sincere compliment within our restricted powers in the form of two words: Come again!

We simply adore you-

Doug.

  

Above: At Lilyan Tashman’s beach house in 1931, photo by Edward Steichen. Clockwise from bottom left: Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Lilyan Tashman, Clifton Webb, Kenneth McKenna, Edmund Lowe (Tashman’s husband), Kay Francis (McKenna’s wife), Ivor Novello and Joan Crawford. Below: Doug and Joan at their home in 1931.

Source: schulson autographs

Transcript:

Dear Poopsie: ---

So very sorry to hear you had to postpone your trip, it must have been a great disappointment to you.

You must think, and justly so, that I am an awful bitch, I'll admit I've neglected you dreadfully, but Clifton dearest, I was working on "Grand Hotel" and I've never been so miserable in all my life, then before I completed that I started on my last film*, which I have just finished.

So you see dear I have been awfully busy, do forgive me for not writing sooner. 

You lucky dog what a vacation you will have this summer at Grace Moore's in Cannes. Do keep us posted in case we are able to join you. 

No other news darling except we miss you, oh I do hope we can see you soon. Write anyway. 

Love from 

your 

Puss


* the film referenced here is Letty Lynton (1932)

Clifton Webb flanked by Joan Crawford and Gene Tierney in the late 1940s.