The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  i am writing frantically, partly to have enough stuff out so that something will sell, and partly because in the last six months i have been saving most of the stuff i wanted to write until after sally was born, so i am spending most of my time writing, and not doing much else.

  i hope you have a lovely christmas. we will all be thinking of you and wishing you were with us. love from all of us.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  january 7 [1949]

  dearest mom and pop,

  i may as well warn you right now; this letter is going to turn into a book before i’m through; i don’t know why i can’t write a short letter, but i don’t seem to be able to, and so much is happening all the time that it’s impossible for me to write less. i guess it’s better than keeping a diary.

  my first communication is a message from stanley to pop, which is that stanley wants to know what is the world’s record for keeping those christmas tree lights going year after year because stanley thinks he has broken it. he says to tell pop that the light cord is entirely tire tape now; stanley won’t give the lights up for anything in the world—he says they fill him with christmas spirit and good will toward men for the two days before christmas when he is putting them together.

  our christmas started a day early, anyway. we had invited stanley’s brother and sister-in-law and june and frank*8 (who hold an honorary position as laurie’s godparents) for the christmas weekend, and they all arrived a day earlier than we expected them, so that the excitement which was due to start on christmas eve actually started the day before. with six grownups and three children in the house you can imagine how things were, and everyone trying to keep packages hidden, so that laurie and jannie were wild. on christmas eve our photographer was due to take pictures of the whole family, and that morning i discovered that the christmas tree we were supposed to get had been overlooked and we had no tree; finally, about five o’clock, the man arrived with two miserable little trees and said that was all he had left, and we should cut the branches off one and tie them on the other and it would be fine. you should have seen those bedraggled old things; the photographer came in one door as the christmas tree man went out the other, and then things started really hopping. the children were all dressed and i was too; i went up to get the baby and brought her down in her best dress only to find that jannie had not been able to stand it and had been sick on the couch and her best dress; everyone was running around except the photographer, who was calmly drinking martinis and setting up equipment. so just as i got the cover off the couch the laundry man arrived and i gave him the cover and made him wait while i stripped jannie and gave him everything she had on. as soon as i got her dressed she started again, and this time i had to change her and me. the third time she did it i had to change her and laurie. meanwhile the baby was getting handed around and admired and the photographer was drinking martinis and stanley and his brother had the christmas lights spread out on the floor where they had been working on them and it was like a scene from a marx brothers movie, with the photographer in the middle, surrounded by cameras and flash bulbs, drinking martinis. he must have put away about seven, because he was certainly feeling pretty gay. so we propped the photographer up and all lined up—our family, arthur and bunny, and no one wanted to sit next to joanne. then when the photographer plugged in his light, all the lights went out and stanley, who was looking grim and wildeyed by now, went down and changed the fuse, which promptly blew again; by this time the photographer was giggling and making faces at the children over the top of the camera; all the while we sat there in the dark while stanley changed the fuses. and june and frank, who were not in the picture, held flashlights for the rest of us. the photographer finally got half a dozen pictures, had a farewell drink, and went gleefully off carrying all his equipment, i put sally and jannie to bed, stanley made a new batch of martinis (we gave one to the laundryman, by the way; he needed it, too) and we went to work to set up our two christmas trees.

  stanley and i both want to thank you, first of all for the lovely things you sent for us, and also for the checks. we are both very grateful; you were so kind to send the first check, and then, when the telegram and the second check arrived, we were a little stunned. thanks very very much. you know how much we needed it, and i only hope you know how much we appreciate it. stanley wants me to tell you, too, his additional thanks for the tie, on which he has not spilled anything yet, and i wore my blouse out to dinner, and also didn’t spill anything on it.

  after we got through christmas we figured things ought to quiet down a little, but they didn’t. since last summer stanley has been waiting for the folklore and anthropology convention which was due to happen in toronto on december 27th, and consequently he took off for toronto, wearing his new tie, and the children and i settled down to a very quiet and relaxed week, to prepare for new year’s weekend, when we expected six more guests. stanley was due back friday afternoon, and all our guests were also arriving friday afternoon, five from new york and one from upstate vermont. there was a big new year’s eve party on campus to which we were to take all our guests, and on saturday we were having an open house with eggnog, as we do now every year, and had invited fifty people. anyway, apparently we planned too big. it rained all week and stanley called me thursday night from toronto to say he was leaving for montreal to get a train home on friday, and he had just been elected to the executive council of the folklores, and on friday morning i called a taxi to go into town to get whisky, and mr carver said “are you crazy?” and hung up. and i called the bus station and they answered the phone and yelled “no!” and hung up. then one of laurie’s friends crashed through the front door yelling “flood, flood.” so that was how we found out that we had a flood. i called the feeleys,*9 who were responsible for the new year’s eve party, and said were they going into bennington to get whisky? and they said certainly, they’d be down in ten minutes to pick me up. so, while the children stood around apprehensively, and mrs nadeau wrung her hands, i put on high boots and an extra scarf, slung my pocketbook over my shoulder, and started bravely out into the flood, to get whisky.

  do you remember the roads up here? the feeleys and i went through the college, and there was a little water on the side of the road, and a little more on 7 into bennington so paul elected to cut off into a side road, which crosses a covered bridge and hits 7 again on higher ground. anyway, we got a little way along it and realized suddenly that what we were trying to cross might have been a road a while before but that now it was the walloomsac river. paul kept saying we’d be all right when we got to the covered bridge but then we went round a turn and there wasn’t any more covered bridge. so we decided to go back, only the water had gone up six inches in the meantime, and there was a big log across the road. helen and i got out to move the log, and the water was up to our knees, and then we tried to lift the log and it was attached to a fence lying across the road. so helen and i walked back to the main road while paul followed us with the car, and the water was up to the running board and had such a current that helen and i had to hang on to each other and it got higher while we walked—it was perfectly terrifying, to see the water coming higher and higher, so that one minute you’d be looking at a rock and the next minute it would be covered. we got back to the road all right, and helped some other people out, and they told us all the roads out of north bennington were flooded, and that all the people living between bennington and north bennington were being evacuated by boat. we watched our pretty little walloomsac river for a while, and it was literally insane—charging along carrying trees and chicken houses and things—and then we came back to north bennington, without our whisky, and went to the post office and discovered that all train, bus, and phone service between north bennington and the rest of the world was suspended indefinitely. no one knew what was happening to the rest of the world. (a lot of the loca
l people who own horses had farms or boarded their horses on farms along the road near the river, and many of the horses drowned; almost the whole town was talking about horses that morning and since no people were in danger everyone was trying to rescue horses.) the main bridge in bennington had broken and main street was a river, and all the stores in lower main street were full of water up to the counters. i asked the man in the post office what had happened to the montreal train and he said it was buried in a landslide somewhere near rutland. that cheered me immensely, as you can imagine. we went into powers store and he was standing in the doorway telling people to stock up, the north bennington dam (our little waterfall!) was going to pieces and might break and the electric current would be off, and the phone and other services were already gone. the poor man was in a panic, and so was almost everyone else downstreet, because of course if our little dam had broken everything in north bennington from our house down would be washed away into new york state. it was amazing; every few minutes the factory whistles would start blowing for anyone—anyone at all—to come and help pump; the polygraphic company is right on the river and they had tons of paper stored in their cellars, all of which they lost, of course, and everyone kept saying the water had gotten into the machines at the cushman company and the factory was going to blow up, and then someone would rush into the store and yell “gotta get the horses off the state line farm,” and all the men would run out. and meanwhile helen feeley was buying food for her new year’s eve party and i was buying food for my six guests and mr powers kept saying to stock up on bread and canned goods and candles. i figured that with food for six guests in the house i was all right, because by then i began to have a suspicion that they weren’t going to make it. so the feeleys and i came back here, and it was about half past twelve and mrs nadeau was valiantly giving the children lunch; since i had not come back in an hour she had naturally assumed that i was drowned, and was carrying on bravely. i had one bottle of whisky in the house and helen and i flipped for it and i won, so i kept it, and we all had a drink and stood around the windows and wondered how long the dam could last. and then the feeleys left and mrs nadeau started wringing her hands and crying and saying she was sure stanley was still alive or i would have heard by now. so i threw her out, quite literally, so she went off down the street crying and i did things like mending the children’s clothes and listening to the radio, which said we were having a flood. and paul feeley waded down from the college to see if i was all right and to get a drink out of my bottle which i wouldn’t give him—the bottle, that is. i gave him the drink. and they started broadcasting a warning to boil all drinking water, so from then on we made our drinks with boiling water and whisky.

  people kept dropping in to see if i was all right, probably because i had the only bottle of whisky in town, so about five o’clock when the phone was working again i was pretty cheerful, and then our guest who was due to arrive from upstate vermont phoned from rutland and said that rutland was flooded and there was no way to get to bennington. and he cheered me considerably more when he said the montreal train hadn’t been caught in a landslide, that was the boston train, and they were bringing people from montreal into rutland by bus, and he would watch for stanley. stanley, i discovered later, had heard only that bennington and north bennington were the center of the flood area and everyone was being evacuated from both towns, and he was stuck between montreal and rutland with the conviction that the children and i were in a rowboat somewhere. he wasn’t able to get any word to me till he got to rutland that night—by which time there was no more phone, so he left telegrams at each place he stopped, to be sent when it was possible, and they started arriving about tuesday and arrived all the following week. in rutland they sent him to troy, of all places, and he took a bus to troy and nearly drowned in the bus station, where water was up over the seats and ten feet deep in the railroad station. i finally got one telegram that night, saying he was all right, how was i? since i was all right i went to bed, and the next morning started getting telegrams from all the poor people who had been coming to visit us. every one of them took the eight o’clock train out of new york that morning, got to troy, and turned around and went back to new york.

  tom paid a taxi driver some fantastic sum to tackle the trip down from rutland, and made it around noon on saturday, and since we were still due to have an eggnog party that afternoon he and i tried to make plans; we ended up with gallons of wine, which was all we could get in town, and about ten minutes before the guests were due to arrive stanley walked in; he and a couple of other people had hitchhiked from troy right through the center of the flood. he said there wasn’t a thing left between here and williamstown, most of the houses crashed in by telegraph poles, and the road under the water most of the way; they spent most of their time driving across fields.

  about twenty people came to our party, and we had a wonderful time. just having stanley home was enough to finish me, and i just sat in a corner and drank wine. and the cushman factory never blew up, after all, our little dam didn’t break, although much of bennington has been badly damaged, and the people are still out of many of the houses.

  anyway, life has been placid since, although we are probably due for a blizzard this weekend. stanley says i’ve been writing for two hours and have surely told you the story of my life by now. i caught my cold wading down the road, and everyone else caught it from me. i will not start a new page. write me as soon as you can—love and thanks from all of us.

  s.

  • • •

  “I just like the binding, that’s all.”

  [To Ralph Ellison]

  thursday [spring 1949]

  dear ralph,*10

  i told my older daughter last night that i was writing to you this morning about the pictures, and did she have a message for you? and she said, with a dignity and sense of propriety far beyond her years, “i would never send any message to ralph, but i will send one to his wife.” so what was the message, i asked her, and she said, “please tell ralph’s wife to tell ralph that my sister and i think the pictures are beautiful.”

  which they do; all three children pored over the pictures lovingly and admiringly, and laurie heartily regretted refusing to be photographed, because he thought that both girls came out handsomely. so do we. i still think you ought to go into the baby-photographing business. run a cute ad in the NYer. also you could do a baby book with the pictures you already have of sally. when do you people come up again? one of joanne’s imaginary friends is named “fanny” and if that doesn’t get you up here nothing can.

  i realize—don’t think i could ever forget—that i still owe you a batch of brownies. but i am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as grand central station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet.

  thanks again for the pictures. everybody sends their thanks and their love,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  monday [April 11, 1949]

  dearest mother and pop,

  although there are a million things i want to ask you—like how you are, for instance, and whether you are all recovered and feeling fine again—i am so excited by my book*11 that i’ve got to tell you about that even before anything else! you know, it comes out this wednesday, the thirteenth, and by now, two days before publication, they’ve sold more copies than they did of the novel,*12 and are talking seriously about passing any records so far for short story sales. they’ve had a second printing before publication, have two english publishers competing for the english rights, have featured reviews in the times and tribune, including an extra one in the times, daily as well as sunday, and an associated press review that says i am author of the week and that lottery is a work of genius and the pu
blishing event of the year! there has been a lot of publicity about it, mainly because of the story lottery, so that featuring it in the book was probably very wise of them, although i opposed it. they’ve turned down three or four requests to reprint the story itself, because they are very optimistic about having the whole book reprinted as a pocketbook before the end of the year.

  their publicity plan, which is smart although acutely embarrassing, got me down to new york for one day last week to be interviewed by a very nice man from associated press, who said that he understood i was a specialist in black magic and would i please tell him all about it. fortunately he had just bought me two drinks, so i was able to tell him, very fluently indeed, about black magic and incantations and the practical application of witchcraft in everyday life, most of which i remembered out of various mystery stories. he kept telling me i was the greatest writer in the world and i kept giving him this sick smile and saying thank you very much may i have another drink please. i kept thinking what a fool i was making of myself and then when he got up to go i said very politely that i hoped his newspaper would like the interview and he said if it worked out right it ought to hit about two hundred newspapers. all i can think of is some of my idiotic statements in two hundred newspapers.