51. TNW to Bill Nichols, October 13, 1926, Nichols Papers, LC.
52. TNW to Henry R. Luce, September 9, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (New York: HarperPerennial, 2003), 16.
54. TNW to Doug and Marie Townson, November 4, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. TNW to APW, November 12, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
56. TNW to APW, October 25, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
57. TNW to Douglas and Marie Townson, November 4, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
58. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, November 2, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
59. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 6, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
60. TNW to Bill Nichols, November 3, 1926, Nichols Papers, LC.
61. Ibid.
62. TNW to Bill Nichols, [December 1926?], Nichols Papers, LC.
63. TNW to Family, October 25, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. Ibid.
65. TNW to Family, November 28, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
66. Hemingway took his novel’s epigraph from his good friend in Paris, Gertrude Stein, whom TNW would not meet and befriend until years later, in Chicago rather than Paris.
67. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and daughters, November 28, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
68. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [December 1926?], TNW Collection, YCAL. The Hemingways had separated because of his affair with Pauline Pfeiffer. The Hemingways were divorced on January 17, 1927, after six months of separation, and Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer on May 10, 1927.
69. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and daughters, November 28, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
70. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [December 9, 1926?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
71. Ibid.
72. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [December 9, 1926?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
73. TNW to Ernest Hemingway, November 9, 1926 [dated in holograph that may not be TNW’s handwriting], SL, 193–94. It is unclear whether TNW read the play, or Hemingway sent it to Boleslavsky.
74. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, November 30, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
75. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, December 13, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
76. Ibid.
77. TNW to Ernest Hemingway, November 9, 1926, SL, 193–94.
78. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and daughters, November 28, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
79. Ibid.
80. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [December 9, 1926?], TNW Collection, YCAL. “Pack of Rhodes Scholars . . .”: TNW to Marie and Doug Townson, March 12, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
81. TNW to Marie and Doug Townson, March 12, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
82. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [December 9, 1926?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
83. Ibid.
84. Richard Boleslavsky to HKS [Herbert K. Stockton], June 6, 1926, quoted by Ronald Arthur Willis, “The American Laboratory Theatre, 1923–1930” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Iowa, June 1968), 146. Herbert K. Stockton was treasurer of the Trustees of the American Laboratory Theatre, according to the ALT program for 1926–27.
85. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and daughters, November 28, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
86. The other plays were The Sea Woman’s Cloak by Amelie Rives, Princess Troubetzkoy; and The Straw Hat, a “Farce Comedy with Music” adapted by Paul Tulane and Agnes Hamilton James from the French play by Eugène Labiche.
87. “New American Play Is Quite Fantastic,” New York Times, December 11, 1926, 15.
88. TNW, Theophilus North (New York: HarperPerennial, 2003), 56.
89. “New American Play Is Quite Fantastic,” New York Times, December 11, 1926, 15.
90. TNW to Marie and Doug Townson, March 12, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
91. TNW to Madam Kelly Wilder, December 30, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
92. TNW to Bill Nichols, February 4, 1927, SL, 202–5.
93. TNW to Marie and Doug Townson, March 12, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
18: DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1927)
1. TNW to Bill Nichols, February 4, 1927, SL, 202–5.
2. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, February 15, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
3. TNW to Bill Nichols, February 4, 1927, SL, 202–5.
4. Ibid.
5. TNW, Journal, November 11, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
6. TNW, Journal, October 11, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. TNW, Journal, Entry 33, [between November 20 and December 2, 1926?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
8. TNW to Bill Nichols, [Spring 1927?], Nichols Papers, LC.
9. TNW to Bill Nichols, [1927?], Nichols Papers, LC.
10. TNW to Bill Nichols, February 16, 1927, SL, 205–7.
11. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, March 14, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
12. TNW to ANW, [March 1927?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
13. TNW to Bill Nichols, July 3, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
14. TNW to Bill Nichols, April 16, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
15. TNW to Bill Nichols, March 15, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
16. Ibid.
17. TNW to Bill Nichols, March 23, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC. Jouve’s first novel was the story, set in Italy, of the illicit love affair between Count Michele Cantarini and the woman reputed to be the most beautiful in Milan.
18. TNW to Bill Nichols, February 16, 1927, SL, 205–7.
19. TNW to Bill Nichols, February 27, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
20. Ibid.
21. TNW to Bill Nichols, March 15, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
22. TNW to Bill Nichols, February 27, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
23. TNW to Bill Nichols, March 23, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
24. TNW to ANW, March 7, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
25. Lewis Baer to TNW, March 21, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
26. Lewis Baer to TNW, March 30, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
27. Quoted phrases from TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, January 10, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
28. Edward Weeks to Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, July 20, 1977, enclosing the typescript of a proposed Chautauqua lecture on TNW, to be given in August 1977. TNW Collection, YCAL.
29. TNW to Edward Weeks, June 3, 1927, TS, TNW Collection, YCAL.
30. Ibid.
31. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 29, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW often referred to the older firm, Boni & Liveright, when he meant Albert & Charles Boni.
32. Lewis Baer to TNW, April 7, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
33. TNW to Marie and Doug Townson, June 7, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
34. TNW to Grace Foresman, May 25, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
35. TNW to Lewis Baer, July 25, 1927, SL, 215–16.
36. TNW to Grace Foresman, July 25, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
37. TNW to Isabel Wilder, July 21, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
38. TNW to Bill Nichols, July 3, 1927, Nichols Papers, LC.
39. TNW to Lewis Baer, July 25, 1927, SL, 215–16.
40. TNW to C. Leslie Glenn, June 14, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
41. TNW to Grace Foresman, July 25, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
42. TNW to Isabel Wilder, July 21, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
43. TNW to Marie Townson, August 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
44. In later years Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant would write memoirs of Willa Cather and Robert Frost, and correspond with TNW about the nature and methodology of biography.
45. TNW to Marie Townson, August 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
46. TNW to Isabel Wilder, August 22, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Lewis Baer to TNW, August 18, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
51. Ibid.
52. TNW to Isabel Wilder, August 22, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. Albert Boni to TNW, August 30, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
54. According to Time, March 28,
1938, the Little Leather Library, between 1923 and 1925, sold 40 million inexpensive leatherbound books through Woolworth’s stores and the Whitman Candy Company.
55. TNW to Marie Townson, August 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
56. TNW to Marie Townson, December 39, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
57. Clark Andrews, “To Us He Was Always ‘T.W.,’ ” Yankee, September 1978, 120–25, 152–68.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. TNW to Marie Townson, [postmarked November 9, 1927], TNW Collection, YCAL.
61. Lewis Baer to TNW, January 6, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
62. TNW to Marie Townson, December 30, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
63. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, December 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. TNW to Marie Townson, December 30, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.
65. TNW to Chauncey B. Tinker, December 6, 1927, SL, 219–20.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
19: “THE FINEST BRIDGE IN ALL PERU” (1928)
1. During an argument, it is said, the viceroy called the actress “Perra Chola”—in translation, “dog-bitch,” or “native or half-breed bitch.” Mérimée annotated his play to assert it as historical fact that Ribera called the actress “Perra-chola”—which, because of his Castilian accent and his loss of teeth, became “Perichole.”
2. TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 18. As noted in a previous chapter, TNW had written to Henry Luce about this. TNW to Henry R. Luce, September 9, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
3. TNW to John Townley, March 6, 1928, YCAL.
4. TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 7–8.
5. Ibid., 8–9.
6. Ibid., 100.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 72.
9. TNW, Journal, Entry 51, December 22, 1926. TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW did not number the entries in his earlier journals. When I have quoted or cited a numbered entry, I have provided the number.
10. Captain Alvarado: TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 58; Valéry’s Captain: Paul Valéry, Eupalinos, or The Architect, Dialogues, William McCausland Stewart, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 135.
11. TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 82.
12. TNW, 1926 Journal, Entry 22, October 11, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
13. TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 7.
14. Ibid., 101.
15. Ibid., 32.
16. Ibid., 35.
17. Ibid., 49.
18. “All onlooker . . .”: TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, [1934?], TNW Collection, YCAL; “inhabitants of the world . . .”: TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 112.
19. TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 83.
20. Ibid., 18.
21. Malcolm Goldstein, The Art of Thornton Wilder (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 56.
22. TNW, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 45–46.
23. Ibid., 89.
24. Ibid., 38.
25. Ibid., 103.
26. Ibid., 102–3.
27. Ibid., 27–28.
28. Ibid., 107.
29. See Tappan Wilder, afterword to The Bridge of San Luis Rey (New York: HarperPerennial, 2004), 109–31, for a comprehensive discussion of the novel’s sales and reviews, as well as sources.
30. Clifton P. Fadiman, “The Quality of Grace,” Nation, December 14, 1927.
31. Arnold Bennett, “A Strange Work on Art and a ‘Dazzling’ Novel,” Evening Standard (London), November 14, 1927, 5.
32. Vita Sackville-West, “New Novels: Realists and Romantics,” Observer (London), November 20, 1927, 8.
33. Edwin Muir, “Fiction,” Nation and Athenaeum (London), December 10, 1927, 404.
34. Edmund Wilson, “Thornton Wilder,” New Republic, August 8, 1928, 303–5.
35. Louis Untermeyer, “A London Letter,” Saturday Review of Literature, May 12, 1928, 867.
36. Hugh Walpole, “Geniuses Are Rare in A.D. 1928,” Daily Express (London), August 22, 1928, 8.
37. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [January 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
38. Ibid.
39. Harry Salpeter, “Thornton Wilder: One Young Author Not Yet Bored with His Double-Barrelled Success,” unidentified clipping, 1928, Wilder Clipping File, TNW Collection, YCAL. This article differs from another Salpeter column on Wilder, “Why Is a Best Seller?” Outlook, April 18, 1928.
40. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [February 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (Handwritten on the letter, most likely by Isabella: “Written 23 Feb.”)
41. TNW to ANW, [early 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
42. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [February 1928?]. TNW Collection, YCAL.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. TNW to Cass Canfield, January 16, 1928, [carbon copy], TNW Collection, YCAL.
47. TNW to Doug and Marie Townson, February 15, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
48. TNW to Marie Townson, June 27, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
49. Ibid.
50. Lee Keedick to TNW, February 4, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
51. TNW to Lee Keedick, February 9, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
52. TNW to Dr. —Bridges, June 31, 1929, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. Lee Keedick to TNW, February 21, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
54. TNW to Lee Keedick, February 23, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. Ibid.
56. Daniel Scott Lamont (1851–1905) was secretary of war during President Grover Cleveland’s second term. After he left the post, Lamont became vice president of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The Lamont lecture was endowed by an anonymous donor in 1905. Lamont was not a Yale graduate; he attended Union College in Schenectady, New York.
57. TNW to Lee Keedick, [1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
58. TNW, “English Letters and Letter Writers,” in American Characteristics, 152–53. In this volume Donald Gallup titled the lecture “On Reading the Great Letter Writers.”
59. Ibid., 157.
60. TNW to ANW, n.d. [ca January or February 1928], TNW Collection, YCAL.
61. Gene Tunney to TNW, January 17, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
62. Gene Tunney to TNW, January 30, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
63. Gene Tunney to TNW, March 6, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. TNW to F. Scott Fitzgerald, January 12, 1928, SL, 220–21.
65. TNW to F. Scott Fitzgerald [February 1928?], in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Margaret M. Duggan, eds., Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Random House, 1979), 217.
66. Wilson, Shores of Light, 376–77.
67. Gilbert Harrison, The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder (New Haven and New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1983), 109–10.
68. Wilson, Shores of Light, 380–81.
69. F Scott Fitzgerald to TNW, [March 23, 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
70. Zelda Fitzgerald to TNW, [March or April 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
71. Carl C. Lohman, Secretary, Yale University, to TNW, March 14, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
72. TNW to Carl C. Lohman, [March 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Incomplete rough draft of a letter, with strikeovers and revisions.
73. William Lyon Phelps, Autobiography with Letters (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 793. Among other topics, Tunney explained how Shakespeare’s plays helped him relax and even helped him train and plan strategy for his fights.
74. Gene Tunney to TNW, holograph letter to “Dear Thornt.,” [June 11?], 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
75. “Tunney and Wilder Plunge into River as Canoe Upsets,” New York Times, June 29, 1928, 18.
76. Quoted in Jay R. Tunney, The Prizefighter and the Playwright: Gene Tunney and Bernard Shaw (Richmond Hill, ONT, and Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, Ltd, 2010), 128. TNW recounted this incident to a reporter from the Glasgow (New Hampshire) Bulletin.
77. TNW to Gene Tunney, December 4, 1970, Private Collection. Tunney was q
uoting a line from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, act 3, scene 1: “And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance finds a pang as great / As when a giant dies.”
78. Gene Tunney, telegram to TNW, [July 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
79. Charlotte Wilder record, Appointment Bureau of Mount Holyoke College, January 21, 1930, Mount Holyoke College Library/Archives.
80. TNW to Ernest Hemingway, June 20, 1928, SL, 227–28.
81. TNW to F. Scott Fitzgerald, [February 1928], in Bruccoli and Duggan, Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 217.
20: PREPARATION AND CIRCUMSTANCE (1930S)
1. TNW to Lewis Baer, August 7, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.
2. TNW, foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters, xv. This book is reprinted in its entirety in Tappan Wilder, The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, vol. 2, 3–7, as well as in McClatchy, Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 651–54.
3. The two plays printed in Harper’s Magazine in October 1928 were The Angel on the Ship and Mozart and the Gray Steward, 564–67.
4. “Thornton Wilder’s Three-Minute Plays,” New York Times Book Review, November 18, 1928.
5. TNW to Bill Nichols, August 17, 1928, Nichols Papers, LC.
6. TNW to Isabel Wilder, September 24, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. Tunney, The Prizefighter and the Playwright, 129.
8. Isabel Wilder, Interview, “1928,” unpublished transcript, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
9. See Tappan Wilder, afterword to The Cabala and The Woman of Andros, 229.
10. Isabel Wilder Interview, November 9,1982, unpublished transcript, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged transcript.
11. Ibid.
12. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL, quoted in Tappan Wilder, afterword to The Cabala and the Woman of Andros, 228.
13. TNW, notations on manuscript of The Woman of Andros, TNW Collection, YCAL.
14. TNW to ANW, [August 1929?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
15. Ibid.
16. TNW, Income Tax Summary, Private Collection.
17. TNW to Sarah Frantz, October 13, 1934 SL, 287–88.
18. TNW to T. E. Lawrence, January 20, 1930, SL, 244–45.
19. TNW to Isabel and Isabella Niven Wilder, date illegible [May 1930?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
20. TNW to Lee Keedick, [June 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
21. TNW, 1929 Appointment Book, TNW Collection, YCAL.
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