The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  monday [May 1952]

  dear mother and pop,

  we’ve been here just a week, and we all think it was the smartest thing we ever did. we drove up from westport, and walked into a furnished house, with everything working, so that i gave barry a bottle as soon as he got in the door, and put him right to bed, while the neighbors were feeding the other children and, eventually, us. since we had so many friends up here the house was full by the time we had been here ten minutes, and we were supplied with milk and eggs and such, and the beds got made, and everything unpacked, and a bridge game going. as a result, moving was less of a jolt for all of us, and the three older kids settled down at once.

  we live in the part of the campus called the orchard, because it is an orchard, with apple blossoms just beginning to come out all over. there are about ten houses in the orchard—one of them, conveniently, our doctor—and most of the families are old friends of ours, and all of them have children, so that there is a constant pack of kids all ages wandering around.

  everything is so relaxed and quiet here, and so informal, that i find even housework is no problem. in addition to the furniture and dishes and stuff, the house also has a bendix, a dishwasher, and an electric mixer.

  our next door neighbors are the feeleys, and we seem to play bridge with them every night. helen helps me with the washing machine, and we go shopping together. stanley and paul play horseshoes and poker and this weekend about ten gentlemen from the college are going to a camp on lake george for four days. stanley is going with them, mostly for the poker game.

  we have several lines on old houses around here; our new hope is to buy an old place for very little cash, and get a mortgage to fix it up. we believe that we can manage that, and of course eventually we’d have a house just the way we want it. i sold a story just in time to pay our moving bills, and expect that they will take another one. i turned in my book, and so can get moving on the next one, if i can clear the guests out of the study long enough to work. the study, by the way, was the particular haven of the master of this house, a musician and composer, and is half full of an enormous grand piano, which we are supposed to treat with respect. a four-foot-high bronze bust of beethoven sits on the piano and cannot be budged. it’s the most hideous work of art i’ve ever seen, and, worse, they have covered it with a plastic sort of cape, so that beethoven sits there, draped, and glares over my shoulder while i work. i wanted to use it to hold the oven door shut, but we couldn’t get it into the kitchen. the house is very comfortable and convenient, although small for us, and since we’ll be spending most of the summer outdoors anyway, we won’t mind. there’s a nice lawn, and of course the whole orchard in front, a pine woods on one side, and the college fields in back. we have a fine view of the nice old vermont hills, and not much privacy from the feeleys, which fortunately doesn’t matter. we plan to sit outside during the summer and make very audible comments on each other’s guests.

  must go get sally at nursery school, so lots of love to both of you, and write soon.

  love,

  s.

  • • •

  [To Virginia Olsen, former Saugatuck neighbor and friend]

  thursday [undated, 1952]

  dear virginia,

  my pen being irretrievably lost inside my typewriter somewhere, this letter may come out in royal blue ink. anyway it is such a pleasure to sit down, even at the typewriter, that i am ignoring the several thousand pressing obligations and doing you a letter instead. there is a lot to be said for being the famous writer sitting in meditation under the trees, as i am presumably doing, but then there is a lot to be said for a comfortable desk. my papers are blowing, and the chair is too low, so that my elbows rap against my knees. i would prefer to be a little less the under-the-trees type, but there is not a desk inside that will hold a typewriter except the one stanley has covered with coins.

  things being the way they are, i cannot think or write coherently, so will try to describe our present situation incoherently, one of the basic tenets of good writing being that the style must be suited to the subject matter. the house, as everyone entering has most kindly pointed out, no longer resembles even slightly the elegant, gracious home the owners left behind, but has the unmistakable look of a somewhat more earthy occupancy. our arrival here was something like the entrance of cicero into rome. ralph beat us here by half an hour, having to stop once and let toby out (toby spent the entire journey sitting on ralph’s lap) where we had to stop fifteen times and readjust barry, who kept slipping sideways. anyway, just outside of danbury, our grandpa shax had decided not to ride in his box anymore, and came easily over the top of the seat and settled down on stanley’s lap with sally. we made a pleasant little family group, mother and dad with their children and their cat, riding along. shax slept on the front seat all the way, taking up more and more room, and stanley kept edging toward the door until he had to keep the window open to have someplace to keep his right arm. when we pulled up in front of our new home there were what seemed like a hundred children and a thousand dogs waiting for us. the kids poured out of the cars and disappeared while ralph and stanley and i began to unload. laurie showed up later in a tree nearby, and sally and jan said they had been out looking at cows, which subsequently turned out to be horses.

  people kept coming in and out until about ten o’clock, when i went to bed, and left the merriment behind. stanley lasted until about one, and then he went to bed, and everyone downstairs continued drinking and playing cards and singing until about three, when ralph went to bed. the next morning the sun was shining and i got up at six and made ralph’s breakfast before he went back, and around ten i woke stanley and he took care of barry, who was sleeping outside in his carriage, while i escorted laurie to school. i had the unforgettable experience of escorting him into the fourth grade, where everything stopped dead while laurie entered, and then everyone began to yell. all his old friends ran at him, and jumped up and down and shouted, and laurie, who had been scared to death of coming back to this school, just stood and grinned like a fool.

  last night, helen came over to teach me how to run the bendix. i had so much laundry that it was beginning to pile up in corners, and stanley was back in westport, so helen and i brought out a bottle of whisky, and began putting wash into the bendix. by eleven o’clock helen and i had done so much wash that the floor was covered with an inch of water, from when i had forgotten to get the thing quite shut. in our girlish enthusiasm we inadvertently included two of barry’s best wool blankets, which i discovered this morning looking like pancakes, and i think i used whisky instead of clorox in the last load.

  we have fallen, actually, completely into a new way of life, completely public and unabashed, so that the kids run loose and so do the parents. i had forgotten, for instance, the vermont way of leaving your doors unlocked so that friends can wander in and borrow a cup of sugar, or the baker can leave the bread in the breadbox.

  jannie said that if the olsens were here it would be perfect; i would also like bill to hear our train whistle, which is the only one in the world with a major key instead of a minor, and brought me, startled, out of bed the first night.

  i can’t find ways to express how grateful we are to you. i think we would not have been able to move at all without you, and, thinking about it, we would probably have left westport much sooner without you. the smartest thing i ever did in my life was stop by your house that afternoon and introduce myself; do you remember?

  all of us send our best to all of you.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Virginia Olsen]

  [summer 1952]

  Dear Virginia,

  It is eleven-thirty, Sally due home from nursery school in half an hour, lunch to be gotten and no beds made, so of course the only sensible thing fo
r me to do is sit down and write to you. this is the first time I’ve been near the typewriter in days.

  Our kids have settled down as though they’d been here all their lives, which in a sense they have. In these three weeks Laurie has changed so much that you would hardly recognize him. We had to get him a bike, and Jannie one also, and as a result we see Laurie only occasionally, and then only for very brief periods. Last night he was home for dinner, but left immediately afterward, and came home about eight with a live fish on a pole, saying that he had caught it, and tonight I am expected to cook it for Laurie’s dinner. It’s in the refrigerator and I only hope it’s dead by now.

  I managed to drop our coffeepot into the washing machine, so that all Barry’s diapers came out full of dried coffee grounds. And the dishwasher chewed up one of our wine glasses and is full of ground glass, so I am gradually getting back to the old fashioned methods. We are having a housewarming party this weekend, to which we have invited seventy people, and all of them have accepted. We cannot of course fit seventy people into this small house, so I do hope they come in shifts. They usually do—first the librarians from the college, a little group of giggling middle-aged spinsters, who each take a drink and say something appropriate (like “hasn’t the weather been awful, though?”) and then the baby-minder set, who have to come early so they can get home early and take the baby-minder home; these people are terribly gay because they have to compress their whole evening into a short time. Then usually we get the earnest group, who have no children but have been attending an interesting lecture in town or else they have been sitting in on the orchestra rehearsal or directing a dance project; these people come in groups, sit with their groups, and talk to their groups about American values or dance or Palestrina. Finally we get the die-hards, who haven’t been able to get away sooner because they’ve been having their own parties at home but are here now because they have run out of liquor; these people stay until morning and they are the ones, Stanley points out sadly, who will break our borrowed furniture. Some time during the evening our friends will come. We are obligated to have this large party, since it’s the only way of getting rid of all favors in one fell swoop, and besides, a party of this kind does wonders for the college in the way of scandal. There is so much pent-up fury in a small place of this kind, that something is bound to happen every time these people get together and take a drink.

  Every story I wrote before we left Westport has sold in these last three weeks except one. The book is due in the fall if they can swing it.

  The house I always wanted—the first one we looked at up here—is for sale again, and if we can raise the down payment (hah) we will buy it. I’ve gotten sort of fatalistic about it. If we’re meant to have it, somehow the money will turn up. A big advance on my new book, perhaps. Meanwhile, our little red house gets littler and littler.

  Everyone individually sends love.

  S.

  • • •

  [To Virginia Olsen]

  September 16 [1952]

  Dear Ginny,

  I realize that you must by now suppose that we are all living in California or wandering vaguely southward in a covered wagon, or camping out ruggedly in the Vermont hills, and since I am not anxious to leave you in that undecided state, I feel that I must sneak in half an hour to let you know our present condition.

  A chronicle of our adventures would astonish you; we left the campus house on August 15, with nowhere to go, and took up residence in a local inn (picturesque, ancient, expensive, catering largely to parents of college students and old ladies who want to spend two weeks sketching the covered bridges), where the children immediately settled down into a happy, well-behaved, mannerly life, dining in restaurants with obedience and charm. This unusual state of affairs continued for ten days, with the children literally enchanting everyone at the inn. Then—like I always said, it had to be a miracle—at breakfast one morning a friend of ours raced up the steps of the inn, yelling, and pushed and pulled us hysterically into a car and over a bridge and up a road and through a door, introduced us, and said “These people want to rent a house.” “Fine,” said a gentleman who looked a little like Santa Claus, at least at that moment. “Furnished?” “Yes,” said Stanley, jaw hanging. “When you want to move in?” “Tomorrow?” said Stanley. “Right,” said Santa Claus. “Here’s the key. Electricity is turned on, water okay, grass needs cutting, and you’ll want to pack up the books and clothes around the house and put them in the attic. Good luck.” And our friend took us back to the inn, with Stanley hanging onto the key with both hands, and all of us speechless. And we moved in the next day.

  The house belongs to Dr. Erich Fromm,*1 a psychoanalyst who taught at the college, and who built the house himself five years ago. He hadn’t finished the house completely, but his wife was not well, and he took a leave of absence from the college and moved her down to Mexico, where she was better for a while, and then, this last spring, died very suddenly. As a result he decided he never wanted to see the house again, and had a friend come up to close the house; the friend had Fromm’s power of attorney and decided on his own hook that the house should be rented so that someday, when Fromm has recovered, he can come back again.

  His house is a dream. It’s on a back road—disagreeably far out of town, requiring that the kids be driven to school and back—and is reached by crossing one of our famous covered bridges marked DANGER GO SLOW BRIDGE WEAK. It’s set by itself in a field, with mountains all around and trees right now beginning to turn red. It’s small for us, ranch style, knotty pine–finished throughout. All rooms on one floor, beautiful modern kitchen, large back porch, three bedrooms, and, at the very end of the house, what used to be Fromm’s office, which we have made into a study-bedroom, with a huge picture window, private entrance, private phone. Three bathrooms. The upstairs, which is the part Fromm never finished, is one big room covering the whole house. One half of it is filled with the stuff Fromm left and the other half is an enormous playroom. The study is a lovely place to work, and my desk sits against the picture window, so that I spend most of my time looking out at the hills. Oddly, we are only just across the river from the college, although it’s a long trip around by the bridge, and we can hear the college bells and see the commons building.

  We all enjoyed your visit up here so much, except that it was inconveniently short—can you come soon again? Love from all to all.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  October 21, 1952

  Dear Bernice,

  I spoke with John Farrar about a week ago, and he asked that I get the revisions on Savages to him by the first of the year. Because of this, I’ve been concentrating on getting out some stories, and haven’t done much concrete reworking yet on Savages. I can get to them right after I finish the story I am at present battering to pieces.

  John said they had set June for publication, and I got a letter from a lady saying didn’t I once write a letter about an election where one of the candidates got killed with a rock? Did I, do you think?

  Best,

  S.

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  [November 5, 1952]

  Dear Bernice,

  My typewriter broke down and I am using Stanley’s, which is uncomfortable. This one has got to sell so I can get my typewriter fixed.

  Shall work on the book with my right hand and do more stories with my left.

  Best,

  S.

  • • •

  [To Ralph Ellison]

  Saturday [undated, 1952]

  Dear Ralph,

  A swift line on my way downstreet to say that those amazing pictures arrived and why do you keep on writing when you could set yourself up as a fashionable photographer? One of the one
s who gets a thousand bucks for spending a day in your home, taking informal pictures of your children. Lunch thrown in.

  We agree in thinking that the picture of Sally with the hand with six fingers is probably the best baby picture we have ever seen. Sell it to the Heinz baby food people. Laurie, who admires himself anyway, thinks your pictures are suitably flattering to him, and remembers having them taken. He is anxious to sit for you again, since you apparently did not show his tiepin to greatest advantage.

  Stanley gave me a very halting explanation of the picture of him on the strange couch. After much thought, he said that he believed that his oculist had a couch much like that, and that you probably took his picture there.

  We insist on paying for your materials; let us know how much. And you promised to send us pictures of your wife and self. And thank you very very much for some of the best pictures of the kids we’ve got.

  As a matter of fact, the best!

  Best,

  S.

  • • •

  “Well, will you tell Mr. Hyman that his son has learned to walk, and will probably reach his office in fifteen or twenty minutes…”