The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  jay williams’ new kid’s book, coming out this spring, is dedicated to sally. she doesn’t know it yet. she corresponds with him regularly, very strange letters about an imaginary country they both believe in. she has written three little books for barry which are extraordinary. stanley told her once as a joke that he would not allow her to publish until she was twelve, so she has set that age for her first professional book. walt kelly*30 sent her a pogo picture, of a pogo offering a bouquet to a sally; we met him in a bar in new york and he was charmed by our description of sally; he also made me a kind of shocking picture of albert alligator chasing a lady alligator, which is framed over my desk.

  i wish we could be with you for christmas, and we will be thinking of you. all our love to all of you.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Libbie Burke]

  Thursday [February 19, 1959]

  Dear Lib,

  Just a note on time stolen from my book to say thanks thanks for the wonderful letters about your house and the pictures which have gone into my house-scrapbook. We are considering remodelling our present house to look like yours and are starting with a fireplace which the man is coming today to put in, digging through the wall about four feet northwest of my typewriter.

  Stanley works steadily, persistently, doggedly, hysterically. Great piles of manuscript accumulate on his desk. Perhaps he will have a book before this wears off.

  I had already anticipated one aspect of your house—doors leading out of the kitchen in every direction; mine was so you could get out fast when something came at you from a corner.

  Looking forward to seeing you soon. I will show you my scrapbook when you come back.

  Love,

  S.

  • • •

  [To Carol Brandt]

  March 30 [1959]

  Dear Carol,

  I am too embarrassed, or too proud, to write this to Pat Covici, but for the record I want you to know. After all my promises about getting the book to him by April 1, I found myself last Wednesday, going fine, on the beginning of the last chapter. Here, I swear, is what has happened since:

  1. Every child in our family, one after another, came down with flu. Now Stanley has it. I will go mad if I have to open another can of chicken soup.

  2. Our senior cat, not to be outdone, has picked up an infection, requiring visits to the vet, and medication; have you ever tried to feed sulfa pills to a large and still strong cat?

  3. Sally, recovering from the flu, stepped on a rusty nail. She must go today to the doctor for a tetanus booster.

  4. Some vital piece of pipe fell out of the furnace in the middle of the night. No heat for flu patients until we can get three men to replace it. Emergency situation, of course.

  5. The entire plumbing system backed up, from a clogged septic tank. Water is seeping through the cellar wall. Emergency situation. Six men with bulldozer, because the ground is frozen too hard to allow hand digging. Two plumbers. No water. It is refreshing to see me washing dishes in a dishpan which I empty off the back porch. We are allowed to brush our teeth if we do it fast. No baths, of course. Barry has invented a system of washing with a water pistol, outside.

  6. I forgot to get the dog licenses.

  Last night after I got everyone to bed, grimy and snarling, I managed to do a couple of pages. But I am still substantially where I was last Wednesday. I like to pride myself on getting things in on time and I thought I had this one made. I am not writing you this, by the way, so you will pass it on to Pat; I would rather you didn’t. As a matter of fact, I am feeling kind of heroic. If I can work all day and all night today and tomorrow I can still get it to him the first week in April. A splendid demonstration of how great art is only achieved through suffering.

  Here comes the bulldozer. On to chapter 7.

  Best,

  Shirley

  The plumber just remarked amiably that on the whole it would have been cheaper to take the whole family to Florida for a few weeks until the ground unfreezes.

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  friday [May 1959]

  dearest mother and pop,

  sorry not to have written sooner, but it has been literally impossible. i was working eight hours a day at the typewriter to get my book finished, then on the publisher’s revisions, then on the articles for good housekeeping, and still have at least two more articles to go. the first will appear in august, by the way, and my story will be in the may 30 issue of the saturday evening post, stanley’s article in the june 13 issue. they are publishing my new book this fall, which means everything has to be done at top speed.

  on top of the various literary pressures things have been generally upset; stanley’s father had what they called a “fairly mild” coronary attack last week, and is in the hospital, not allowed to move or lift a finger for at least three weeks and then three more at home. we thought we would have to go to new york but he cannot see visitors until he goes home, so all we can do is call every night; stanley’s brother is there, and luckily, because of course stanley’s mother has taken it very hard.

  also, we are having a heat wave, the temperature has been above ninety every day for a week, and stays in the eighties at night. the children love it, of course, but it is almighty hard to work. stanley has been having a rough time, since he was behind schedule already on his book, and between the heat and his book going badly and worrying about his father I genuinely believe that he is going to be sick himself if i can’t make him calm down. we are going june first to a kind of literary convention at a resort in the poconos, and it will be four days of comparative rest for him, so i just hope he can hold out that long. he can’t sleep, and sits up reading most nights. the only time he was really cheerful was when the government sent him a refund on his income tax.

  anyway, things are not all a tale of woe. the kids are fine, nearly crazy with spring at last, and the leaves and the lawn green and strawberries growing wild in the fields. all the kids have changed, even in the short time since you were here. laurie came back from bermuda with a nice tan and great ambitions; he had met a girl from a college in virginia and they were so taken with each other that she invited him down for their spring weekend and dance, and laurie took most of his money out of the bank and flew to virginia for a weekend. he had his first encounter with segregation, and it shocked him horribly. he came back saying he would never go south again, even to see his young lady. he passed his driver’s test without any difficulty at all, and has taken over the station wagon, which is practically on its last legs but still goes. he now can take jobs in cities relatively far away, and has more work than he can handle. he made a hundred dollars last weekend, which just about pays for his virginia trip. this weekend he plays in boston and next weekend in pittsburgh. he has also been invited to go with a college band to europe next summer, and will be playing with them in new york city over this coming winter. he has to rent a tux for the job in pittsburgh. in the meantime he is still supposed to be painting our back apartment, but we can’t compete with the wage scale for union musicians. he was chosen king of the junior prom, by the way.

  joanne, only in junior high, was not allowed to go to the prom, but was among several junior high girls chosen to do menial jobs like taking coats and serving punch, which of course turned out to be very exciting and important, and to require a semi-formal dress, something i had not expected to deal with for a while. we spent two days shopping, bennington being very limited in this area.

  sally, who changes while you look at her, is an entirely different person these days. she is strictly a summer child anyway, and kind of freezes up during the winter and then blossoms with the first flowers. she rides her bike and goes on long walks by herself. she has stopped quarrelling with everyone,
and suddenly has friends dropping by nearly every day.

  barry is so busy these days he never has time to talk to any of us, and falls asleep the minute he gets into bed. he and a group of buddies have suddenly become able, this spring, to walk to one another’s houses—they all live within a certain radius of the school.

  stanley, after two more sleepless nights, has finally agreed to let me call the doc, thank heaven. (he keeps putting it off even now, though; and he gets so irritated when i try to argue with him about it; i am sure there is nothing wrong with him except the strain of all these things at once, but he will only listen if the doctor tells him.) right now he is afraid that something will prevent our going away next week, and he kind of suggested that maybe it might be a good idea to wait on the doctor till we came back but i said i wouldn’t go unless he saw the doctor first.

  stanley has sublet a two-room apartment at columbia for the time he will be teaching there. new york in july and august is not fit for human habitation, and i cannot imagine how silly i would have to be to leave nice cool vermont and sit around in the city. stanley is very amused, and a little jealous, because i quite seriously plan to drive myself down to the race track at saratoga—about forty miles—and spend a day at the races; i love the place, and he never has the time to go, and so this is my chance. what i am most afraid of is all the good people around here who will think “poor shirley, all alone for the summer.” this is my chance to get a lot of work done and some exploring—i want to go to several new england towns and see old houses—and the idea that everyone is going to want to take care of me worries me. i can’t make anyone understand that after twenty years of always tagging along after stanley or the kids i now enjoy going places alone. i drove down to middletown connecticut, where i gave a lecture at wesleyan, and had a wonderful time all by myself; i found myself a nice old inn where i stayed and i got lost of course, but not seriously. also i like to stop and talk to people and look at houses and i can never do that if i am with someone else. it has occurred to me that i might even do an article or two on new england towns but i won’t know that until i see what i can find to write about. saratoga during the summer is like a suburb of north bennington; no matter when you go you meet half a dozen people from home. our entire town lives around that track. every morning in the store you hear who hit the daily double and how louise dalton has been playing the two numbers of her age for years now, and every year she gets older and last year’s age wins.

  now, though, i must go to work to earn enough money to lose at the track. i am still doing the good housekeeping articles, but no word yet about whether they want a contract for a monthly one. keep your fingers crossed.

  joanne hopes to come sometime early in july; is that all right with you? also, what kind of clothes should she have if she goes into san francisco with you? in new york she would wear summer clothes, but dressy, is it the same there? she will have to look like a lady on the plane. i can’t tell you how excited and happy she is to be coming.

  i must stop now, and go make lunch. i can hear barry and his friends coming up the hill. lots and lots of love from all.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Carol Brandt]

  May 18 [1959]

  Dear Carol,

  Pat has very kindly sent me the first copy of HILL HOUSE,*31 for their catalogue, and since I am most anxious to be agreeable and ladylike I am only asking them to change one word, although I am concerned to find that their general tone seems to emphasize the “readers who like ghost stories” angle rather than the idea—mine—that this is a serious novel. I tried to say this politely to Pat, but of course realize that their publicity is none of my business anyway and I don’t know what will or will not sell books. What I did balk at was the statement that there is many a chuckle in this book.

  I have a clean new filing folder with one small note therein, for a new book.

  Best,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [Letter to a fan]

  wednesday [summer 1959]

  dear mrs ramsey,

  that was an unkind cut of yours about having almost finished my cup of coffee, unkinder than you knew, since for two weeks i have been indulging in a frightful and probably contagious (burn this letter) intestinal disease, and greet myself in the morning with a teaspoonful of paregoric and a bracing cup of cocoa. i thought for a while that my husband was feeding me small regular doses of arsenic and went at once and changed my will but he says no, he is essentially a kind-hearted man and could not bear to see any living thing suffer the way i suffer when i watch him drink his morning coffee.

  i do not answer fan letters (jay williams—do you know his charming books for children?—got a letter once from a little girl saying “every time i write to an author it turns out he is dead. if you are alive will you answer this please?”) but sometimes they are like yours, from somebody it would be fun to talk to so i do. i am also taking the liberty of sending you something of mine i bet you haven’t read. parts of it are better not read at all but it was written for fun and my older son made his first theatrical appearance as the enchanter, blowing his lines only twice.

  what is an adult education writing class? i mean, which is the operative word? not education, surely?

  most of hillhouse was written when i was alone in the house, yes. with six black cats lying around. it was easier when i was actually writing than when i stopped and wondered what was going to happen next. i am not able to get started on a new book because all i really want to write is another ghost story and you simply can’t write two. i am toying lightly with the idea of a murder story but suspect i lack the courage to kill anyone. my husband is wholeheartedly afraid of ghosts and absolutely refuses to read hillhouse even though i offered to mark scary passages so he could skip; he did give me the greek and hebrew words and most of what we were calling the lucan devices (particularly that delicious book the father made for his daughter; there actually was a book somewhat like that advertised in an english auction catalogue, although i enlarged and detailed it considerably; we bid a hundred pounds for the book but missed it; some other ghoul got there first).

  do write again if you feel like it. it was nice having your letter; i won’t say that you made that damn cocoa more palatable, but you helped.

  cordially,

  shirley jackson

  • • •

  [To Barry, Sally, and Joanne]

  Monday [July 20, 1959]

  Dear Barry/Sally/Joanne,

  This is to be a very long letter full of adventures, so I am making a carbon copy and sending that to Joanne and the other to the camp for Sally and Barry. First of all, I want to tell all of you how glad I was to get your letters. It is nice to know that all of you are enjoying yourselves.

  (Joanne: Sally caught two sunfish. Barry painted a rock. Barry has learned to swim a little. Sally got her cheek cut because some fool boy was swinging a stick, but she was not seriously hurt.) Laurie and I are enjoying ourselves, too; Laurie has been going down to jazz concerts at Lenox, and he met Count Basie. The only one who is not enjoying himself is poor Dad. I have been with him this weekend and he says it has been terribly hot in New York and even though his apartment is cool and his office is air-conditioned, by the time he gets from one to the other he is worn out. He can’t sleep because it is noisy, and the only really good thing is that because his apartment is on the tenth floor there are no flies. He bought himself a lot of clothes, thank heaven, and now has enough socks to last him for a while. Also, he tried to buy a tube of toothpaste and couldn’t remember the name of the kind we used, so he made the man in the store take out every kind until he found the one he recognized. (Barry, Sally: speaking of clothes, Joanne writes that her cousin Barry is choosing her clothes for her; she says he helped her buy a skirt covered with pictures o
f old railroad trains.)

  Dad had to go to Newport, Rhode Island, this past weekend for a folklore festival. He had to give a short speech, and it sounded like a nice weekend, so he asked if I would like to meet him there. He drove up from New York with some friends, and I started from here, leaving Laurie to feed the animals. Newport is a very strange place; it is an island and you can only get there by going across a long bridge and then on a ferry boat. The bridge was very long indeed, and very slippery, and Morris was simply terrified, sliding around over that ocean. On the ferry boat I was almost homesick for the ferries we used to take when I was a little girl in San Francisco; if they still have them I hope Grandma will take Joanne on one. Newport itself is a fairly small island, about three miles wide, so there was not much trouble finding the way around. I met Dad in the hotel and it was so nice to see him again. We were both so hot and tired we just sat around the hotel room having a drink and taking cold showers. It was a lovely hotel, very big, and we were in a kind of annex, where they were putting all the people who came for the folklore junk. The next morning we took the top off Morris and drove all over the island. About fifty years ago many very very very rich people from New York owned most of Newport, and used it for summer vacations, and it was the fashion to build enormous, very elaborate houses along the edge of the ocean, some of them as big as the French chateaux I have in pictures, and many of them very strange architecturally. There is at least one castle. Most of the big houses have about a hundred rooms, and big beautiful gardens which reach down to the edge of the ocean, with big stone walls for the ocean waves to crash against, so you can stand on top of the wall and look down on the waves. By now most of the rich people have given up the houses, because these days it is simply too expensive to run such a house for the summer (it took forty servants, for instance, just to keep the house going, and twenty gardeners to take care of the grounds) and most of the houses have been closed up, because of course no one will buy them. We drove along the ocean drive, and it is sad and strange to see these great huge houses standing there, one after another, as though they were sailing along against the sky, and all boarded up, with the windows shuttered and sometimes chimneys falling down. Two or three of them have been bought by a group of people who want to preserve them as kind of museums of the way people used to live in Newport, and one of them, “The Breakers,” was open when we were there, so Dad and I went on the tour through it. It made me want to cry, because all the furniture has been kept, and it is so lovely, with no one ever going to live there again. Most of the ocean front of the house is balconies, where they used to have breakfast looking out over the ocean, and the other three sides are gardens. Inside there is one room all gold and silver, with a little gold piano with pearl keys, and marble mantlepieces from Italy in all the rooms. (Sally: I just talked to Mrs. Wohnus and she said they had seen you at the Williamstown theatre at “Auntie Mame” and you had a beauty of a black eye.) As far as the folk festival was concerned, I have never seen so many guitars in all my life. This was the first time they had tried it (although they have a jazz festival every year) and they were surprised because so many people came. It went on for two days. In the evenings they had two programs of various performers, one after another, of different sorts. (We only went to the first evening program, which was quite enough, I can tell you; it lasted for five hours.)