[unsigned]
• • •
[To Sally]
[March 1963]
dr sarricat
short letter because you will be coming home so soon.
i’ve been going to the doc by myself these last few times and today i daringly went into bennington and actually into two stores. i can go to powers and get the mail without much trouble.
very difficult for me to write because when they fixed my typewriter they made it too tight and the paper won’t move smoothly but catches and pulls, and all the keys are stiff. i can’t write unless the typewriter is rattling and shaking and pieces are falling off.
lots and lots and lots of love.
m.
• • •
[To Abby Fink, one of Stanley’s literature students at Bennington College, and later a close friend of Shirley’s]
friday [April 1963]
dear abby,
i am at present enchanted by a lady named edith thompson who with a young sailor named bywaters did to death mr thompson. edith and byw. were both hanged in england in 1922, and ever since earnest people have been trying to say that edith was innocent and that she was convicted because byw. foolishly kept the daily letters she sent him when he was at sea and because they are passionate love letters she was actually convicted of immorality and not murder. her letters are full of passages about how she is going to have to wait for her lover boy to come home because she gave her husband the stuff in his tea that morning and he noticed the bitter taste and she is afraid that she will not be able to give him anything with a bitter taste any more and she tried the ground glass in his oatmeal three times but the third time the glass was not fine enough and he got a piece caught in his tooth but she is saving a brand new lightbulb which she just bought to use after he stops being suspicious and she wishes to hell bywaters would come home so he could help her because she is having a tough time trying to swing it alone. this among long passages about how she loves her sailor boy and how she hates her husband and how happy they would be without him. the earnest people who say she had nothing to do with the murder of her husband read all the bitter taste and ground glass passages as kind of poetry and at the trial bywaters said yes, he got the letters and yes, he read the parts about the ground glass etc. but he thought mrs thompson was just kidding. she did not save any of his letters and i am trying to make up for this by sketching out his probable answers. thus:
dear mrs thompson,
got your last and thanks for writing. it is nice of you to call me darling and lover boy just like my mother does, it makes me very homesick. no, i will not be back in england for another six weeks, but will surely phone you when i get in and maybe we can take in a show or something if mr. thompson would like to. please do not write me any more, though, about light bulbs and ground glass and tea with a bitter taste, because my stomach is already quite upset what with being at sea the way i am, and always delicate anyway. well, must close now the captain is calling me.
Best regards to you and mr. thompson,
very sincerely,
p. bywaters.
they stabbed poor old thompson on the street corner near his house, when he was coming home with his wife from the theatre, and mrs thompson told the cops right off that bywaters did it and they read all the letters in court and bywaters spent the whole time with his face hidden but mrs thompson was pleased and kept nodding at the good parts. poor bywaters tried to say he was not guilty at first, but mrs thompson kept saying he did it and she was very much surprised when it turned out that everyone thought she was in on it because she said she just stood there wringing her hands. I am very glad they hanged her. She must have been extremely clumsy, but I wonder about bywaters; he was hanged on mrs thompson’s evidence, and he finally pled guilty and tried to get her off.
[unsigned, and probably not sent]
• • •
[To Sally]
thursday [April 1963]
salliblu
i was delighted to hear that you are working on that story. i am still finishing my notes for you, but somehow there has not been much time to get to the typewriter. we have had a very busy social life which shows no signs of ending.
nine magic wishes is to be published on april 29; i should have copies of the book any day now.
carol called the other day to say that the movie of hill house was finished and the company said it was breathtaking, superb, absolutely faithful to the book, a great movie. they want it to open at radio city. they have a print of the movie at their offices in new york and we were invited to come down for a private showing any time. i lost my nerve at the idea of driving to new york but carol says that since the movie will not be released before summer we can come down any time for the private showing, so i can wait and gather courage. the doc gave me a new pill. it’s bigger than the others at least.
so write soon. much much love from all; work hard, work hard, work hard.
love,
m.
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
wednesday [April 1963]
dearest mother and pop,
it was good to get your nice letters and to talk to you the other day. i am glad you are reassured about me, since there really is nothing to worry about now. i am making very quick progress, my doctor says, and my big trouble now is that i am not yet strong enough to hang on to the gains i make, so that i backslide very often. also one result of all this is a complete mental tumult, so that i cannot trust my own reactions or opinions; everything changes from day to day and there is no sense of proportion, so that i felt perfectly awful a day or so ago because i broke a dish and went around feeling miserable all day and looked like a tragic heroine when stanley came home and thought he was unkind because he could not see how serious it was to break a dish. he learned quite a while ago not to laugh out loud when i did this. and some days i am so happy it is unbelievable and it becomes terribly important to do something like making a cheesecake for laurie and corinne. these are perfectly “normal” reactions to my present stage, and i only wish i could write them down as they happen but it is impossible; i can only write the barest details because of course i know really that these things are not sensible.
what “ails” me, pop, is what they used to call a nervous breakdown. and the really surprising thing about it is that it started perhaps eight years ago, as nearly as i can discover, and has been getting worse ever since. oliver points out that his records show that it was eight years ago when he first started giving me tranquilizers because i was so jumpy all the time, although we agreed that if he had suggested my going into therapy then i would have thought he was batty. anyway the analyst, perhaps the only irish psychoanalyst in the business, says things are going fine.
tomorrow night we leave for michigan, which is a big step ahead for me. i have been in the car as far as north adams, about thirty miles away, but otherwise not away from home for more than a trip to bennington. we have a bedroom on the train (i am still not equal to flying) and we get on at nine-thirty with a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of scotch and wake up at six a.m. in detroit. then on to east lansing where stanley gives a lecture and attends a conference and where i am a kind of visiting writer, and then home saturday night. i am very much excited at going and not at all frightened. laurie will drive us to albany to the train.
our friends barbara and murry karmiller have been unbelievably kind and helpful during all this bad time, and having both been in analysis and come through it all right they are quite a steadying influence on me. they keep telling me don’t worry; it will all go away in time.
laurie has gotten a job for the summer. he will be a cashier at our new race track, and make fourteen bucks a day. the race track is the first in vermont, and we are
all very excited about it; it is about ten miles from here; now we can do our betting nearer home. and laurie will pay us off if we win. although he still loves music, his new great love is photography. he has his own darkroom, and his senior thesis at the college is going to be a picture book; he will write a text and then illustrate it with photographs. he has barry camera-happy too, and they go off together on photographing trips, taking pictures of old barns and snowfalls and rusty farm equipment.
corinne and the baby are fine, corinne still managing to keep up with her painting and doing very well at it. we see a good deal of them, naturally, and grow more and more fond of corinne. young miles is becoming a terror. he has two teeth with which he bites people and is just starting to walk and pull down everything in sight. he is big and strong and very handsome, and very happy almost all the time.
joanne has been admitted to bennington this coming fall. she is wildly happy because it was the only place she wanted to go, and we are all very pleased. she will of course live on campus, and come home perhaps once a week for dinner. she will not take stanley’s courses. she is planning to spend the summer at home just relaxing. she is learning to drive, and wants to help out at home (i think it is high time she learned to cook, and i plan to leave her in charge when stanley and i go away).
sally is not doing at all well at school, but she called the other night and was most encouraging; her grades are better and she is working hard. we are very happy to find that she is making friends and is quite popular at school. we are praying that her grades will be good enough to let her go back to school next year. it would be ruinous to send her back to north bennington.
barry is doing fine and is quite happy with lots of friends and he is a boy scout and delighted with the little league, and busy all the time. he is off on his bike every saturday morning and is gone all day unless he gets hungry. i took him shopping with me yesterday partly because i do better with someone with me, but mostly because he needed shoes. he can go into the stores by himself and buy things, in case i feel like staying in the car.
as you can see the news is almost entirely good, and everything goes well.
everyone sends love, and write soon.
lots of love,
s.
• • •
[To Sally]
tuesday [May 1963]
dr salliblu
enclosed: allowance checks, for you and joanne. also enclosed: the sallirules.*23 let me know what you think of them.
came this morning a press release from the movie company about hillhouse. the movie is made—was photographed in england, partly at hatfield house, where elizabeth I was kept prisoner for several years, and partly at another great old house which was already haunted although only on fridays. they used the grounds at hatfield house which elizabeth always thought of with great tenderness. theodora is played by claire bloom who was the female star in olivier’s richard III. julie harris is eleanor and someone named russ tamblyn is luke. i don’t know who plays the doctor except in the press release he is no longer doctor montague.
my doctor is very well thank you. there seems to be progress. at any rate i keep going.
dad wants to tell you that he has been very busy and so could not write. he is sorry not to have had more time but when things let up a little you will hear from him.
lots and lots and lots of lv.
m
• • •
[To Carol Brandt]
July 2 [1963]
Dear Carol,
I know I should not complain of the Vermont heat but there is no doubt that it is hard to type when your fingers melt into the keys. Many thanks for checks, information on THE HAUNTING (and have you seen the little ads asking people who have seen ghosts to write in to MGM?), and information on English CASTLES.
We come to New York, I think, on July 30. I will have to let you know a more complete schedule as soon as I know myself, since I am apparently giving a lecture at Columbia one evening. Stanley now thinks that he will pass up the viewing of THE HAUNTING; the photograph on the cover of the paperback was too vivid; he loathes ghosts and scary things. I am very anxious to see it, and prepared to be terrified. And of course delighted to know that others are coming too.
My two big difficulties, which should be improved by the time I come down, are a reluctance to be packed in tightly anywhere (as in cocktail parties or traffic jams!) and a reluctance to go alone across open spaces (like walking down a street). Both are far easier if I am not alone, and perhaps if necessary Pat may let me borrow Julie again.
As far as THE FAMOUS SALLY BOOK is concerned, Stanley still likes it and thinks it is worth publishing. perhaps we should wait and talk about it when I am there.
I’ll have a chance to see you and Pat, won’t I, apart from the movie?
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
wednesday [September 6, 1963]
dearest mother and pop,
happy birthday to mother; i hope it was one of the best.
everyone is well; young miles has eight teeth and is starting to walk. he is so big it is hard to believe he is not quite a year old, and very strong.
i am doing fairly well; i have not been doing any writing at all, not even letters—as you already know—and am beginning to have to accept the fact that i have a long siege ahead of me. i have done very well about traveling this summer, but still cannot do much alone. i am going to try to drive sally back to her school next week; joanne will come with me.
we saw the movie of “the haunting” in new york at a special preview. it is actually a very poor movie, the plot of the book changed radically, and far too much talk, but there are a couple of terribly frightening scenes in it and a lot of exciting camera work. stanley and i were both really scared, and the house is wonderful. it opened for some reason in albany, also when we were out of town, which was good, because we avoided the premiere; all the actors were there, and the director, and they made a big fuss which we were very glad to miss. it opens in new york on september 18.
big news now is the broadway play,*24 which is definite. at least they paid me a retainer of ten thousand dollars, which makes it definite enough for me. this is an advance against box office receipts; they expect to open the play either december or january, and everyone is very optimistic about it. i don’t know how they could possibly make a play out of “castle” but they seem to think they can. i signed a thirty-four page contract in which i am called The Novelist and the guy who is doing the adaptation is called The Writer. The Writer gets flown economy fare to any city where the play opens but The Novelist has to get there on her own.
glad to get pop’s letter this morning and know that you are well and looking forward to your trip. you’ll have a wonderful time, and no asthma. our little trips have been fun, although mostly business; i did do a lecture in new york at columbia university, and it went very well. i was quite nervous ahead of time about getting frightened in the middle and having to stop, and stanley was ready to take over but actually once i started i forgot all about the panics and enjoyed myself. i have never been nervous about lecturing and have never minded doing it, so it’s nice to know that i still can. i saw my doctor at his new york office the day after the lecture and he was very proud of me.
we took the children to atlantic city on an odd trip. they loved it because we traveled up the coast and stayed at seashore resorts which all seemed to have ferris wheels and wild rides, and the evenings were spent careening from one ride to another while stanley and i sat and watched the waves come in. and we all—even me—went swimming in the ocean.
stanley and i went to pennsylvania to see amish farmers and eat shoo fly pie and look for hex marks on barns. the country is perfectly lo
vely, but the shoo fly pie is awful and all the hex marks were on gift shops. the amish farmers were there, though, riding in buggies and blocking traffic. we stopped at tamiment, which is a big fancy summer resort where stanley has been asked to lecture next summer, and they asked me to lecture too; it means we would stay at the resort for a week, since the lectures are held on monday nights. we are not sure whether we could take a whole week of resort life, but the food is marvellous. we were invited to stay for lunch and it was the only good meal we had in pennsylvania. i am always surprised at the way these resorts are like little cities set out in the mountains, with new york papers delivered every day.
i will try to write again soon. i am trying to get back to work, have agreed to do a review for the herald tribune and have promised to start work on a new book this fall. since money still comes in every month from the last book it is hard to find an incentive to write a new one!
lots and lots of love to you both from all of us, and have a wonderful trip.
love,
s.
• • •
[To Libbie Burke]
October 24, 1963
Dear Libbie,
Thanks for your words about “The Haunting,” although since I got paid in advance I don’t really worry whether or not the movie is successful. I saw it last July at a private showing at the MGM place in New York, and found it quite scary, although very talk-y, and then took young Barry to see it here in Bennington, and nearly went to sleep; scariest part of the whole thing the second time was the parking ticket I got while I was in the movie. And Barry had not a bit of trouble sleeping afterwards.
The Letters of Shirley Jackson Page 59
