If the 1930s were a time when Boulanger and Stravinsky learned how to dialogue as colleagues, 1940–46 marked the time when they came to respect and care for each other as friends. Boulanger arrived in the United States on November 5, 1940, on the SS Excambion to assume teaching duties at the Longy School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Her first text to the Stravinskys dates from November 19, 1940, in which she wrote of seeing Soulima Stravinsky in Vichy, France, prior to her departure and of how disappointed she was to learn she had missed performances of Stravinsky's new Symphony in C in Chicago by only two days. Igor and Vera, in turn, wrote to Boulanger, asking if she could intervene on their behalf with Sergey Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Moreover, Boulanger and the Stravinskys sought ways in which all three could reunite.

This chapter presents Stravinsky at his most candid and charming. In letters from March 31, 1941, and July 29, 1941, for example, Stravinsky writes to Boulanger of his sincere worries about her health. Elsewhere, he playfully squabbles about money and the cost of copies of his latest compositions (May 18, 1943, February 28, 1944, and June 29, 1943). In this chapter, Stravinsky gives Boulanger a copy of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (November 14, 1944), and elsewhere he writes to share with her newspaper clippings of musical and nonmusical matters to “amuse” or “distract” her (February 28, 1944, for example). In a rather touching exchange from 1945, Stravinsky arranged to have copies of his latest work, the Symphony in Three Movements, sent to Boulanger for her fifty-eighth birthday (letter from September 20, 1945). This was the last birthday she would spend in the United States. When Boulanger replied to ask if she could pay Stravinsky for the copies, the composer responded: “Why do you bring up money … I can give you a gift, too—it's true, it's nothing big, all the more reason to—why talk about it? You owe me nothing save a few ‘love and kisses’ in your next letter” (November 16, 1945).