The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  November 18 [1954]

  Dear Bernice,

  I shall certainly try the piece House and Garden asks about, and I have another half-finished story which I shall send soon. Mr. Whipple, of Life, wrote me a very kind letter, apparently thinking that I was terribly upset about their turning down the story, which of course I was not, and saying he hoped I would keep them in mind when next moved to do a similar article.

  I am edging right now around a most delicate kind of story, which I am afraid will turn out not well, partly because I would be writing it out of a kind of nervous image-magic. We are in a kind of panic up here; one of the music assistants at the college died of polio yesterday, after being sick for about four days. He taught classes, from which students went to all parts of the college, including the nursery school and practice teaching in the local schools. You can imagine what is happening; the local paper of course gave great attention to the whole business—day by day reports—and by this morning there were only three children in the nursery school, instead of thirty, one of them our valiant Barry. About fifty college students have fled. What I was thinking about was a story on the spreading panic, like the medieval plague; local shopkeepers do not yet hesitate to take money from the hands of college faculty but it may very well come to that. Do you think it is too touchy a subject?

  I must also ask you for information regarding a play which I have been doing, to be presented at the college. I am using the Salem witchcraft material, although I will have to change all the names, since I am not sticking to facts. The idea is that I write the play, a faculty composer does the music, and the thing is produced by the combined drama and dance departments. I’ll send the manuscript to you, of course, to deal with however you see fit, but what about the music, which will be done specifically for the play? This is still in the future, of course—I’ve not quite finished the first act—but everyone is terribly serious about it, and it will be exciting if it works out the way it sounds now. How many tickets do you want for the opening night?

  Best,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  december 21 [1954]

  dearest mother and pop,

  i know i owe you all kinds of apologies for not writing, and i can only excuse myself by saying that the last couple of months have been nothing but confusion and wildness. barry has not been outdoors since the week before his birthday. he caught a cold in the middle of november and he still has it, complete with wheezing. we were a little panicky at first, because there was a big polio scare at the college—two cases, one death, and students tearing off home in all directions. the kids at the nursery school had been indirectly exposed. the one good thing in all of it was that oliver ended up the school term with extra gamma globulin, and he says there is reason to believe that g.g. injections will keep kids from catching cold. he is doing an experiment on barry and four other kids; if it works they should be cold-less for several months, and it may get barry through the winter more successfully than things look now.

  all our cats vanished in the space of about a week, including my beloved old shax, which made me feel very unhappy. we decided that he was so old he just wandered off and died, which didn’t cheer me much. the day we finally gave him up—when he hadn’t been home for a week—a stray cat showed up, all black, very handsome, but only a kitten, obviously sent by shax as a substitute. he was starving and sick, so i took him to the vet, got him shot full of penicillin, and we kept him down cellar for a couple of days until he was well again. when we let him upstairs at last he marched past the whole family, straight to barry, and got onto barry’s lap. we named him gato, and although he regards himself as barry’s personal cat he has learned to like the rest of us. he’s extremely intelligent, and has been a real blessing since barry’s sickness. it is so nice to see barry working away with his cars and trains on the floor, and gato right there, or sitting in barry’s lap purring while barry reads to him. when barry goes to bed and the cat is sure he is settled for the night he comes down and sleeps on the piano.

  writing goes very badly, as i told you over the phone. thanks to a combination of a million things, partly barry and probably the kind of nervous tension i got involved in this summer, i haven’t been able to do any writing at all. the witch book and the life story got done by a kind of dogged grinding out, and it took me two months to do the life story, when ordinarily i would have done it in a week. at that, they turned it down, but i got the half payment for it. bernice sold an old story to mccall’s, and i got a whopper of a royalty check on savages, so we have been comparatively affluent without my doing any work at all. now, however, bernice is pestering me for a couple of new stories, some fool magazine wants an article, and here i sit. stanley says he is going to kill oliver for deciding that my jitters were due to overwork, because now i am all calm and collected again i still don’t work, and he wants oliver to find something that he can diagnose as underwork. this letter is actually the first writing of any length i have done since midsummer so things may be looking up again.

  it is maddening, too, because everything is so encouraging. bernice writes despairingly that she can sell anything she can get, and three or four publishers are very much interested in my doing a novel for them. also her hollywood agent is in a deal to sell bird’s nest for a movie scenario, not on one of these big million-dollar things, but on speculation.

  the witchcraft book is probably coming out in the spring. they like it very much. savages was translated into german and norwegian. i have a story in the bennett cerf humor anthology, and there is a woman in san francisco named elizabeth richmond who keeps writing me threatening to sue me for stealing her name in bird’s nest. bernice won’t let me answer her.

  one of stanley’s inspirations was singing lessons, which i start the first of the year. he has the idea that i must busy myself at interesting things, and not have any time idle to be depressed, so he has about three dozen brand new books lined up for me, lists of new things i am to decide about buying, and these darn singing lessons. the singing teacher at the college is an old friend and a real good teacher. but it will be a lot of fun and even if i don’t come out singing i will enjoy it.

  we will be thinking of all of you on christmas. lots and lots of love from all.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  January 29 [1955]

  Dear Bernice,

  Either Aunt Anna’s*20 pink champagne, or talking to you, or mad carousing at the automat, has had an odd effect on my morale; these two stories are the product of the past week, and I have two more on hand to do. Whee.

  I forgot to tell you that I had given up the story I wanted to do about the polio scare; it partook too much of my own dreary state at the time, and the material will fit much better into some other form, perhaps a scene in a novel.

  Obviously the sequel to Savages must be called On the Raising of Demons.

  Best,

  S.

  • • •

  [To Bernice Baumgarten]

  February 21, 1955

  Dear Bernice,

  I hesitate about doing a piece for Vogue. Partly it’s because what with one thing and another I haven’t done the other one, on getting along with children, although I have pages of notes for it, and partly it’s because I’ve never yet done anything for the editor but what she wanted it re-written and revised and changed and battered right into the ground, and the last time she asked if I’d mind throwing out all but the first paragraph and doing it over, I resolved never to tangle with her again. If you think better, however—and this was, of course, before I had your iron hand to defend me—I’ll surely do it.

  I am assuming, being a natural optimist, that the three
stories you have, have all missed selling to the Companion or McCalls, and a plague on both their houses. I have the first vague notions of a new novel, and am anxious to get going on it, but I want to sell a couple of stories first.

  The Michael Joseph Birds Nest is, I think, a lovely-looking book. I think the jacket is terribly funny. They left out the dedication to Stanley, and he is going to retaliate by adding the dedication to me to the other cuts in The Armed Vision; he is mournfully hacking his firstborn to pieces, putting in a page every time he takes out a paragraph; he will end up by taking out only the dedication.

  Sally, the first day of her convalescence from flu, took up a Mother Goose and discovered suddenly that instead of reciting the words she was following the text; we were electrified, downstairs, by a great triumphant cry of “I can read! I can read!” and without any more warning than that she set herself to reading every book in her bookcase; this morning she read us a paragraph from Birds Nest, remarking only that Mommy wrote pretty hard.

  I believe I will be able to retire very soon now.

  Best,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  march 7 [1955]

  dearest mother and pop,

  i can’t imagine what you mean by our having cold weather; it’s all of nine degrees this morning and only about eight inches of snow. you californians are superstitious about eastern winters, think it’s cold all the time.

  i nearly came part way out west to wave to you. the other morning i got a call from salt lake city, asking me to come out for two weeks this summer and teach a short story writing class at a writers conference. they paid all expenses, and five hundred dollars, and they pointed out sadly that of course they had no extra accommodations so i would have to leave my husband and children at home. for about an hour i was quite tempted at the idea of just going off all alone for two weeks, traveling by plane and visiting a city i didn’t know, something i’ve never done before. stanley gave me some good pointers on teaching a class (like if your knees begin to shake sit down casually on the edge of the desk) and the children were all amazed. naturally when it really came down to going or not going i called the man back and said no thanks. the next day i got invited—all expenses again—to be on some panel quiz show on television in new york, an offer which holds no temptations whatsoever. actually, since birds nest was published i have made it a rule—officially on file at my agents and my publishers—that i will involve myself in absolutely no personal publicity under any circumstances, which includes everything from interviews and photographs to that cute biographical information (“she writes with a turkey feather dipped in rainwater”) everyone is so crazy about. i just refer everyone to who’s who in america, with great satisfaction.

  the pocket edition of savages has come out; have you seen it? if not, i can send you a copy. they are translating birds nest into french. we couldn’t get the danger program, but tom brockway saw it in washington, and i found out that they took my poor harmless story and put in a mad killer and a gun moll and a murder and a fight on a racing train and a portable radio. i’m very glad i didn’t see it. my agent and i have just gotten the whole matter of re-writing settled between us, because of this television program and the movie version of birds nest; it came to a point where i either had to say no important changes in plot or character because i will defend my perfect prose to the death, or simply say if you pay good money for it, it’s yours. neither the agent nor i felt any hesitation whatever, so i signed the movie contracts.

  we’ve been having a wild weekend. louis scher, the new york rare book buyer, our great old friend, is here on one of his regular visits; that means that he arrives saturday afternoon with quantities of good corned beef from a new york delicatessen, presents for all children, and a clean shirt, and from saturday afternoon until he leaves late monday night we do nothing but play bridge, gin rummy, pingpong, and eat. he is extremely popular with everyone up here, and everyone wants to see him when he comes, so it means that we have three separate parties, one each night. saturday night was the social party, for non-bridge-players, and everyone ended up playing pingpong, and laurie stayed up until two in the morning beating everyone, very pleased with himself at attending a real grown-up party. sunday night was the night for serious bridge players, with two tables of bridge which finally broke up at four this morning; tonight we have the non-serious bridge players, who will get sillier and sillier and finally all drive louis to the bus sometime around two. then stanley and i spend the rest of the week recovering, until stanley starts college again next week.

  the kids are all well, sick of school and winter. laurie got the flu, very suddenly; then sally and jannie got it, but mildly, and barry got a slight cold, which was apparently from the same bug. laurie was out of school for two weeks, but the girls only missed a couple of days. then, after everyone else was all through, i got it, and spent two days in bed. the first morning the kids got my breakfast but it was so awful that after that i got out of bed and fixed my own toast and tea, and then the second evening stanley suggested that perhaps a little straight whisky might make me feel better, so i had some whisky and it nearly finished me off; i have never been so sick in my life. for about a week i couldn’t stand the idea of taking a drink, and then one evening i was feeling fine and had a cocktail before dinner and by the end of dinner i had to go and lie down because i was deathly sick. i decided that since it was lent anyway i might just plan to give up drinking for a while, but stanley said it was all foolishness and imagination, so i tried it again, two nights ago; the feeleys were over and everyone laughed at me, so i took half of helen’s drink, and couldn’t get out of bed the next morning. so now i don’t even dare have a glass of b and b after dinner, and when we play bridge, like last night, i drink ginger ale. it helps my bridge, and i feel fine the next day. stanley is not drinking either so we now have tea every afternoon. paul feeley says he is still shaking from the afternoon he wandered over for a drink and found me peacefully drinking tea, with a plate of homemade cookies, with the cat on my lap and stanley doing what paul swears was knitting, although he was actually untangling a string for barry.

  jannie and laurie have been going to drama school, and had their big midyear performance last week. jannie was the star in her play, a princess, doing very well and looking perfectly beautiful in lipstick and a crown. laurie was the father in his play; he had gotten a special haircut to part his hair in the middle, and he wore a big black moustache which fell into his coffee cup in the approved manner, a cigar, and a derby hat which he absolutely adored; he is the biggest ham in the world.

  sally is doing nothing but reading; i got her a few very easy books, and she went right through those, and is now reading fairly hard stuff. stanley says she reads as well as laurie, which is not as unjust as it sounds.

  time to go to sleep. i got up this morning and saw the kids off to school, so stanley takes the afternoon shift. love from all of us.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  friday [April 1955]

  dearest mother and pop,

  since i have no car today it gives me time at last to sit down and write a letter. i have decided to be real bold and have the snow tires taken off, although it is only the end of april; we are having what is locally referred to as “spring” weather, which means cold, rain instead of snow, and mud.

  we have been quite ambitious, had the lawn seeded and cleaned up, and gravel put down in the driveway. barry spent a wonderful day watching the dump truck bringing load after load of gravel, and then, best of all, they sent a road scraper to even the driveway, the driveway is supposed to get hard as a rock before summer. no more mud holes to get stuck in. and my raspberry bushes are actually getting a leaf here and there. stanley points out that sooner or later i w
ill have to invent the trowel, since i cannot go on indefinitely gardening with a tablespoon. laurie planted a garden, mostly radishes and carrots, and he swears the radishes are coming up, although he is the only one who can see it. and we have one crocus. i have fallen into the hands of a lovely gentleman who comes around every two weeks or so with a beautiful catalogue showing pictures of marvelous flowering bushes and stately old trees, and every time he comes i fall for it and order something and so far nothing has come out looking like it does in the lovely catalogue, but i enjoy it and sooner or later something is going to grow, although probably not the grass seed, since half an hour after it was put on the entire pigeon population from our barn showed up for a great harvest banquet, and the kids and i, plus the dogs and cats, spent most of the day trying to herd pigeons off the lawn.

  jannie spends all her allowance every week on books, and i have had to limit her to three books every second day from the library. she has read everything in the house except the psychology books. three afternoons a week she is engaged, with music lessons and drama classes and brownie scouts, and the other two afternoons after school she and carol*21 walk down to the library and apparently sit around and gossip with the librarian, because they stay all afternoon. as i keep pointing out to her, anyone who is too busy to make her own bed should really be too busy to pass the time of day with the librarian.

  and now sally is begging to get a library card of her own; she is reading so amazingly that we can’t keep up with her. her allowance isn’t equal to buying books, so she spends her allowance on pencils and paper and writes her own books, and i have to buy the ones she reads. my agent has already offered to take sally on as a client, and i have no doubt but what she will publish—quite seriously—one of her books before long. last week was vacation, and sally had a fine time; she stayed up every night until eleven or so, reading and writing, and then slept till noon the next day, and flourished on the routine. all our children, as a matter of fact, like the kind of schedule stanley and i do, except they can do it; stanley had to teach the week of the kids’ vacation, so every morning at eight o’clock stanley and i would have breakfast alone, and he would go off to school, and around ten or so the kids would begin to straggle down to the kitchen. both sally and jannie are getting fine report cards and they are doing quite well in music lessons.