The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  *3 Hangsaman.

  *4 Story magazine.

  *5 The Lottery and Other Stories.

  *6 Sarah Geraldine Hyman was born October 30, 1948, also at the Putnam Memorial Hospital.

  *7 On her marriage certificate, Shirley changed her age to twenty-nine from thirty-one, and for the rest of her life, she will maintain that she was born on December 14, 1919, making her only six months older than Stanley.

  *8 June Mirken and Frank Orenstein were friends from Syracuse who remained close to the family for decades, often visiting for holidays.

  *9 Paul and Helen Feeley and their two daughters, Gillian and Jennifer, were Bennington neighbors who would become lifelong close family friends. Paul was a noted painter-sculptor and fellow faculty member, and a prime mover in bringing New York art world painters to Bennington, moving the college over the years into the international art spotlight. He and Stanley were also founding members of the legendary Bennington College Faculty Thursday night Poker Game, which grew over the decades to include college presidents and deans, numerous artists, composers, writers, visiting dignitaries, and many celebrities. Helen was a member of the college administration and edited the alumnae quarterly magazine.

  *10 Stanley likely started reading Ellison’s work in the late 1930s, but they did not meet until the early 1940s, when a mutual literary friend introduced them. At the time, Ralph was editor of Negro Quarterly, a Review of Negro Life and Culture. He and his wife, Fanny, became lifelong friends and academic mentors to Shirley and Stanley, as Shirley and Stanley were to them.

  *11 The Lottery and Other Stories.

  *12 The Road Through the Wall.

  *13 Joseph Henry Jackson is an important literary critic in San Francisco.

  *14 Shirley has begun writing lighthearted stories about the children after the success of “Charles.”

  *15 Omnibook magazine was published from 1938 until 1957 and ran authorized abridgments of bestsellers.

  *16 Red and Minna Sdolsky, friends from Shirley and Stanley’s West Village days, remained close to the family and visited many times.

  THREE

  • • •

  On Indian Hill Road: 1950–1952

  Two articles recently [included] me among something called promising young writers, which is equivalent to being selected by the sports writers on their second-string all-American baseball team.

  —To parents, January 13, 1950

  Stanley’s book of literary criticism, The Armed Vision, is published in 1948, and in 1949 he resigns from teaching at Bennington to concentrate on his work at The New Yorker. Shirley’s book The Lottery and Other Stories, or, The Adventures of James Harris is published in 1949 to enthusiastic reviews. The family has just moved to Indian Hill Road in Saugatuck, a beachfront suburb of Westport, Connecticut. New neighbors include the New Yorker writers J. D. Salinger and Peter De Vries, and many other publishing people. This is a very different lifestyle for the family; for Shirley and Stanley it is a wonderful convenience to have New York so accessible, most comfortably by a one-hour train ride, and to have friends from New York so frequently visiting.

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  friday [January 13, 1950]

  dearest mother and pop,

  at last i have the chance to sit down and write you a letter, something i’ve been trying to do for exactly a month now.

  our house is so pleasant now, and so comfortable. so far it has been a vast improvement over the other one; i find i enjoy getting up at seven into a warm room. we have the bookcases up and painted, taking every possible inch of wall space in the house, and most of the books in. that has been a two-week job, since the movers packed the books, and finding and organizing eight thousand mixed-up books is something i hope i never have to do again. there are still cartons of books around the house, blocking up the hallways, but they are going fast. naturally we have two thousand more books than we have bookcase space, but that has been true for the last five years, so we’re not really surprised. unlike the other house, the study is now the main room, i suppose because the television set is in there, and almost everyone spends all their time there. it’s a lovely room—one side, the one i am facing now, has four windows, and the other three sides are books. if that sounds like there are no doors, it’s because the doors are sort of sneaked in behind bookcases.*1 fortunately it’s a large enough room so that there is room for both desks, a small couch, and two chairs, with a coffee table, and makes a very comfortable place to shut the children into with the television while we have dinner.

  joanne has not yet found anyone to play with, and spends all day at home with me, entertaining herself very well, but still very much alone…yesterday we were both invited out to luncheon, by a nice woman named katinka de vries, whose husband is on the new yorker,*2 and who has a five-year-old daughter whose name is jan, making a good deal of confusion. they came and picked us up at twelve, and we went to their house and had lunch, and joanne and jan played while katinka and i drank martinis—martinis in the middle of the day always give me a headache—and then we drove around the town to look at the beaches and such, and then came home. joanne was very pleased, and katinka and jan are coming to have lunch with us next week. i found it very difficult, on top of my headache, to spend a day with anyone named katinka, although she is a very nice person.

  business also has gone back to normal, with my agent, who can call me now instead of writing, pestering me for stories and my publishers calling to say happy new year where’s the new novel. someone wants to read lottery over the radio in boston, non-profit. an educational program put on by harvard, as if harvard didn’t have enough money to pay reprint rights on lottery. also the fiction editor of colliers wants to take me to lunch next tuesday because he wants an old story of mine if i rewrite it. i told my agent the story was no good and she said fine, fine, talk him out of buying it, he wants to pay a thousand dollars and who needs a thousand dollars? so i quick sat down and wrote a new story which is also no good but some better than the one he has and if the one he has is so much trouble to rewrite i will slip him this one. my agent and i are also going to have cocktails at My Club—did i tell you i had A Club? it is called pen and brush, in new york, and is an association of terribly earnest young women who paint and write and do ceramics and have literary teas. mrs roosevelt is our honorary president, but i don’t think she was the one who put me up for membership; it was most likely dorothy canfield fisher,*3 who is very important down there, and patted me on the head the last time she visited bennington college. anyway it’s sort of a good thing around Publishing Circles to belong to pen and brush, and it has a club steward, and stanley can’t get in unless i take him. when you come to new york i will take you there. stanley doesn’t belong to anything except the folklore society which doesn’t have a bar.

  i am glad that you and pop agree with me about the first prize in the short story collection. we also got another vote from one of the reviewers. and, which gives me great pride, two articles recently including me among something called promising young writers, which is equivalent to being selected by the sports writers on their second-string all-american baseball team. stanley is hard at work on his book, if you could call it hard at work when he goes into new york twice a week, is doing seventeen reviews, his paper for the folklores, and two long articles for the new yorker.

  we have had guests almost every night, and weekends have been full up. the two senior members of the seven bookhunters, our finders of rare books, spent one weekend out here helping arrange, and one of them, who is a frenchman and a fine cook, deserted the books long enough to come out into the kitchen and advise me on making soup.*4 so i’ve been making onion soup and potato soup and leek soup and any other kind i can think of, ever since, and he is coming out again next weekend and says that he is bringin
g me a french soup kettle because the pot i have been using is not large enough. so when you come i will make you onion soup.

  one very good thing about this house is the playroom in the cellar. we have the old music box down there, and joanne sometimes plays it as accompaniment for her dancing. laurie got a fencing set for christmas, from his crazy father, with real foils and masks, and they fence down there while joanne dances.

  stanley and joanne are yelling for lunch so i must go and heat up some onion soup.

  love from all of us, thanks again for the nice presents, and do write me soon.

  love,

  s.

  • • •

  “Isn’t it nice that moving day came during Stanley’s vacation?”

  [To Geraldine Jackson]

  friday [January 1950]

  dear mother,

  i only have time for a short note. joanne is waiting to go out for a walk and shopping has to be done and we have a cleaning woman named evelyn who is here today for the first time, and very competent she seems, too, and my agent is writing me nasty letters about where are some stories, although why she should i don’t know because i just finished one on request for colliers and the reader’s digest has just picked up charles and also the twenty-five cent edition of lottery is out and when you see it for heaven’s sake don’t let anyone know you know me because there is a picture of a disheveled redhead on the cover and a caption to the effect that she had lost her demon lover and is wickedly delicious and every time i think that someone might know it’s my book i shudder. i had lunch with the editor of colliers last week, a fine lunch with three martinis and he said he would buy my new story. and lottery is due out in england this month.

  i started this to let you know that the lamp came safely, and is beautiful, although it took us a week to figure it out. sally is walking beautifully, and is starting to talk; she will be able to say grandma by the time you come. it will be so good to see you, and will be so soon now. jannie is planning to go back to california with you, i think.

  love,

  s.

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  monday [April 1950]

  dearest mother and pop,

  i have just come shuddering from the phone after learning that it will cost us seven-fifty a week to have a man mow this lawn, and approximately thirty bucks to get apples off our apple trees; the man said for heaven’s sake what’s the matter with everybody, later on in the year you can get a bushel of apples from the grocer for about a dollar and a half and all anyone thinks of is putting thirty dollars into a tree to get a dozen apples a year. so i quick said never mind, we’d plant some carrots out back instead and he said Carrots, why does everyone think carrots are the thing to plant, because the weeding you got to do with carrots will kill you, if you want to plant a vegetable, plant tomatoes, you put them in and in two, three years you got the prettiest little tomato patch you ever want to see, that will cost you about seventy dollars. so i said tomatoes were seventeen cents a pound at the store and he said lady, you said you wanted a garden, didn’t you?

  our entire family has been taking to its beds sometimes all at once and sometimes one at a time. television has proven itself again: sick children on the study couch under blankets, watching baseball games. sick daddy and sick mommy watching baseball games. brooklyn has been doing fine, but so have the yankees. giants, no.

  perhaps what has saved our lives, is the greatest blessing which has ever happened to us, named emma. emma arrived through a series of coincidences and lucky breaks, and i keep knocking on wood she should stay. she lives in, loves the kids and they love her—they all, including baby, call her “emmy”—is a fine cook, and very sweet and pretty and nice. she has taken over all meals, and almost complete care of the children, particularly baby. when i come downstairs in the morning there is hot coffee on the stove. we can go out any time, and come back any time, and the children are perfectly happy. she’s been here a week, and she still likes the children and us, and maybe she will stay. both stanley and i are making frantic efforts to write a lot so we can keep ahead of emma.

  some television company bought lottery to make into a television play. i don’t know how or when or who, but my agent says their money is good. also if this works out they may buy more stories.

  stanley went on his ten-day book hunting trip and brought and sent home nearly a thousand books, which we have no room for. stanley’s mother is still not at all well; every time they think she is doing all right she has a new attack and they have to start over. we are taking the children to see her this week, which will probably give her another attack…we have circus tickets for wednesday, and figure to combine the circus and a visit to lulu,*5 just to round out the children’s day.

  emma can drive and says if we get a car she will a) drive it, and b) teach me.

  stanley and i went to opening day at ebbetts field, and brooklyn won, and it was lovely. i almost caught a home run, except that it finally landed two rows behind us, and we couldn’t get to it. and we went out to dine with some very fancy writing people who live nearby and everyone there was a rich writer and had written a best-seller, except for one guy who turned out to be my editor at good housekeeping, and we were invited for seven, arrived at seven-thirty, and were the first ones there. we were served martinis made of pure gin with a drop of bitters, and drank these until everyone arrived, which was about nine. dinner was served at ten, after about eight rounds of those martinis. dinner turned out to be shrimp newburg, just the thing for stanley and me, and after dinner everyone sat in a circle on the floor and we played charades. everyone talked most insistently about lottery, and they were all surprised to find that we had not been in florida this winter. they all also commute to hollywood. stanley said it was the most awful evening he has ever spent in his life, and i think he was right. the only evening we could remember which was almost as bad was one we spent with four of stanley’s aunts and uncles shortly after we were married. worse still, people we met at the dinner have now asked us on to their house, and probably the people we meet there will ask us, too, and heaven knows where it will end. they call it getting acquainted. i suppose it is very kind and very flattering of them, and they are certainly all very generous and pleasant—they all knew the name of my book, and of stanley’s, and we didn’t know any of theirs—but just the same they are very dull, and too shrimp newburg-y for us. no chips on the china, napkins for everybody, eighteen matched cocktail glasses, and so on…there’s no doubt but what there’s money in writing, if you work it right.

  some maniac taught laurie to play dominoes, and no one is safe now except joanne, who can’t add. i have promised him a championship match this afternoon because joanne has taken her first day out in a week and has gone to visit a school friend for the afternoon and supper. lots of love to you both, and write me soon.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  tuesday [June 1950]

  dearest mother and pop,

  i am glad you liked the orchid and even gladder that you are caught up in television; we find now that we are constantly defending it against people who say mean things about watching fights and ballgames all the time. i wish you could get our eastern programs—the ballgames are terrific, and brooklyn is in first place.

  we have made our house into a perfect place to stay outdoors. we got a lot of picket fencing and stanley set it up for a big playpen for sally, where she is very happy. the playpen is located almost directly under laurie’s treehouse in the apple tree, so he can drop cookies down on her head. (stanley just called my attention to a small brown rabbit directly outside the study window; it is eating buttercups.) next to sally’s playpen, there are soon going to be a collection of chairs and tables, as yet unpainted
and waiting for laurie to attack them with brush and shellac. we have a croquet set, which it turns out is definitely laurie’s game, although joanne is still practicing golf swings with it, a barbecue thing which lives in the cellar and gets rolled outdoors when we want it, and we have taken all the junk off the back porch and moved the kitchen table out there, so that the children’s dream has finally come true—they eat on the porch and have their food passed to them through the window. on weekends we look like a particularly second-rate summer resort, except the cuisine is superior.

  i just told emma about the rabbit and she said if the mister had been quick enough we could have had rabbit stew for dinner; i think she had visions of stanley tackling the thing and strangling it with bare hands. diving through the study window.

  i am to meet my english publisher next week. my new novel is almost finished and my agent is making a big fuss so we can ask for a larger advance. i met my publisher at a cocktail party last week and it seemed that i had had one too many cocktails because i laughed merrily and told him he was the biggest crook in town and i wanted twenty-five thousand dollars before i let him so much as know the title of the new book. he thought it was very funny and told my agent he probably couldn’t go up to twenty-five thousand but was “very anxious for the book.” this is my junior publisher, straus; john farrar would swoon if anyone asked him to pay that much for a book. roger straus and i have quarrelled ever since i signed with them but as long as he is amused when i call him a crook in front of half a dozen of his other authors i can’t leave f and s.