December 1933–June 1934

Corinth, 12 February 1934.

Dear Mrs.Dohan:

To save repeating some of the things I have said to Mr. Jayne in response to his telegram announcing the plan for resumption of work in Cyprus I send you a copy of my letter to him of Feb.8.

Yesterday I had a second cablegram from him, reading:

Good but feelCurium particularly [word or phrase omitted?] Wire Cyprus authorities whether permit possible. McFadden hopes sail end February. Would like early information.

I wired immediately to the archaeological authorities at Nicosia, and hope to have a reply tomorrow or the day after, in season for me to get a letter off to Gunnis and Dikaios by the good fortnightly mail leaving Athens the 15th. I plan to ask them to attend to the preliminary negotiations, supposing Curium is available for us, in the hope that we may avoid some of the delay I foresaw when I was writing my letter of the 8th to Mr.Jayne. I have written him as soon as I have news about this effect, and will of course cable him as soon as we can get the permit extended to new areas as fast as we need.

I should be grateful if you would tell me the whole in-side history of this, (to me quite unexpected for this season),return to excavation in Cyprus: how Mr.McFadden came to be interested, how Curium the site preferred. Is work expected to be done primarily in the cemeteries? As far as the acropolis or in the city and acropolis or in the cemeteries/ part of the site (except the stadium) that I know well enough for negotiations to have a distance. However, the important thing at the beginning is to have a permit in hand, applying to even a small definite area. Judging from our experience of 1931-32 we can get the permit extended to new areas as fast as we need.

Please tell me about Mr.McFadden. I know only that he made a very agreeable impression on me when I saw him here last Sep-tember. What did he study in college? what are his interests? Which part of excavation routine will he take to? I hope he has a good fund of patience and will take days and days of resultless labor philosoph-ically without loss of interest or much diminution of enthusiasm. In particular, has he the training to do surveys and plans? Of course he drives a car [I don't imagine that he would think of bringing one, but if he did it would have to have right-hand drive to be allowed on the roads of Cyprus], but I hope that we shall be able to have the service again of the chauffeur we employed in 1931-32. He was an excellent driver, with an invaluable capacity and readiness to turn his hand to any work we wished, so that when we had no use for the car he was still never idle.

If because of my hints about stationery Mr.McFadden should think of bringing some filling cards they might be of the size you find best in the Museum, unless these are pretty large. Otherwise the old standard size, ·128 x ·077, (or the next regular size larger). They should be as thin as may be and still stand up well, of course.

If Mr.McFadden is not something of a surveyor and drafts-man I hope that Miss Cox can be somehow persuaded, or enabled, to come out to Cyprus again. You know how very good her work is. We should pro-bably not need her services all the time, but there is in Cyprus abun-dant material in the fields of her special interest and plenty of work needing to be done in them. We were very fortunate that the most valuable member of Lapithos, but I think we would agree that the most valuable member of our staff at it was D.H.Cox.

Handwritten: signature