The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
Page 31
Hotel Buckingham 43 rue
des Mathurins.
July 20 1937
Dear Ones:
Imagine!
Meetings opened today. The morning was devoted to a very French Ouverture Solennelle. A ministre; Herriot; compliments and abstract nouns.173
After a great luncheon given by the secretary-Adjoint of the League at the Grand Hotel, we returned to begin the real work.
Scarcely had an hour gone by when a secretary whispered to me: “M. le Président (Paul Valéry) espère que vous prendrez la parole après M. de Madariaga.”174
It was about language and the American enormities had been touched upon.
I spoke and though it was against the rules of the conference I was applauded!
It was a Defense of the American Language. The entirely different psychological character of the American has led to a long struggle to refashion a language that was built up over centuries to describe another type entirely. I gave some illustrations of these profound differences and when I struck off the formula: “an Englishman hopes that tomorrow will be like today, though a little better; an American even when he’s happy hopes that tomorrow will be very different from to- day.”—then, Mr. Gilbert Murray175 and “Passage to India” Forster were delighted and M. Valéry turned with pleased surprised
Anyway, all the ideas were Gertrude’s.
At six o’clock, reception and sit down buffet with champagne at the Hotel de Ville, and speech from the Mayor. We sign the livre d’or de Paris.176
Tomorrow lunch at the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères.177 As for me, I’m a boy that likes champagne.
Delightful time at our end of the table at lunch today: M. Oprescu, Prof of history of art at Bukharest; Paul Hazard of the Collége de France (a charmer)<;> Dr. Yu Ying, of the Univ. of Peking, and a Signor Pavolini, president of the Fascist Confederation of Artists and Writers, who was given my book by his best friend on the very day that friend was to be killed in the Abyssinian War!!! We had a dandy time over that succession of wines and were very witty indeed.
I had a good long heart-to-heart tea with Sibyl at Armenonville in the Bois; then she took the train back to London and work, work, work.
This year the only fault with Paris is that I don’t sleep very well.
Now I go out every night at twelve and get a tisane. Mother, Isabel—make yourself a tilleul178 out of that box up in my study window.
¶ The only people who looked sour at my offering today were Mssrs Jules Romains and Georges Duhamel.179 Je m’en fiche.180
I’ll hope
Ran across Malcolm Cowley in the American Express and took him to a meeting. Awfully nice fellow. Had been down to Madrid.
More soon.
Haven’t I been good about writing?
Thine
Thornton
Mme Bousquet of the enclosure is the Lady Colefax of Paris. Great friend of Proust, Anatole France and Henri de Régnier.181
150. TO ISABEL WILDER. ALS 6 pp. Yale
Poste Restante Salzburg
Aug. 25 1937
Dear Isabello:
Got your letters an hour ago—you know, the Post Office by the Cathedral.
Telegraphed you both to come over.
Why not?
Some rooms in a little pension; by the Riviera. Cheap. Sunlight. Walks. Make Ma work hard at French. Make Ma loaf. Little train trips up and down the little coast. Would even help my work.
If Ma resists leaving the house you might come for two months to a Zurich pension.
Sure.
If I get a telegram from you favorable, I telegraph Fritz Wiggin to release you all due moneys and don’t skimp. Be comfortable.
And don’t think its chilly of me if I don’t come to Paris to meet, that’s all. I’ll wait for you anywhere else, but I won’t go to Paris.
Now re Situation.182
Your shock will have 3 phases:
To pride.
To your View of your Future.
Real affection.
Only the third is worth suffering.
Separate the strands and stamp on the first two.
Suffer the third, purely and honestly until it gets done with.
The Second:
Again separate 2 strands.
Don’t overdo that notion that a woman has nothing to say or be or give unless she’s wife-mother-and-home-decorator.
We’re all People, before we’re anything else. People, even before we’re artists. The role of being a Person is sufficient to have lived and died for.
Don’t insult ten million women by saying a woman is null and void as a spinster.
You say you’re old plain and poor.
A. You’re not old. Rhetoric. Self-pity; Old is not a term of disparagement even if you were old. A woman of 36183 is old only
B. You’ve not only an attractive characteristic extraordinarly like-yourself face, but you have the mysterious gift of dressing to it, realizing it. When you enter a room the others are every time arrested, charmed & engaged afresh over your delightful presence and its delicate harmony with your personality.
If you want to see some women cursed with plainness I’ll show you some.
So is theatrical. Rhetoric self-pity.
POOR? Think it over. Yes and no. And Yes because you allow it to gnaw you.
The Scotty business.
Lots of its Pathological.
Does pathological mean that anyone’s to blame?
He’s a big healthy male? Why isn’t he married?
What’s he do about sex and the owning-four-walls instinct?
Believe me: There’s a psychic fear of going thru with a thing. He’s ill.
And you, too. From some deep infantile Father-love-and-hate you brought up a lack-of-confidence in that realm that colored the air without you’re knowing it.
Otherwise a Command would have shone through you.
What of it?
Out of these infantile conditionings we make our strengths as well as our weaknesses.
In the long run its not important.
The Self is more important then the Social or Amatory situation; more important than hereditary obstructions.
Digest the experience by reasoning; accept the suffering insofar as it is not crossed will and false pride—convalesce and start thinking of other things.
I’m writing a letter to Ma at the same time about Salzburg. It would look bloodless to put that into this same letter. Read her the first page of this.
As for Insomnia: don’t try to fight. Relax. Read a little. Play solitaire. Keep your thoughts of
Better take a trip to Europe. There’s plenty of money.
love!!!
Thornton
Gertrude Stein and TNW.
Gertrude Stein and TNW. Courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
151. TO GERTRUDE STEIN AND ALICE B. TOKLAS. ALS 4 pp. Yale
Poste Restante Salzburg
Aug 26 1937
Dear Endeared Dears:
So at last I decided to buy some stationery and resume correspondence.
I’ve changed unrecognizably.
For the worse.
I’ve decided to live entirely for pleasure.
Yes.
Never try to think again. Never try to write again. Just pleasure.
The other night after a performance of Falstaff. wonderful, too, I went, as one must, to the Mirabell Bar. Went into the Casino and gambled a little, cosÎ cosà,184 then sat drinking and talking with friends until the Bar closed. No one wanted to go home; so we went, as all true Dedicated Drinkers must after curfew, to the IIIrd Class waiting-room at the Railway Station, and there we sat until eight in the morning. The party was slightly mixed. It consisted of Erich Maria Remarque, the author of “All Quiet on the
Western Front,” and Carl Zuckmayer, author of Der Hamptmann von Köpernick, an elegant play; and a wonderful German Archbishop—incognito and in civil—on obligatory vacation; and Frau Tal,185 my German publisher; and a Swedish streetwalker. Just us. At 4:45 every morning Mass is read in the Station for the line workers, and the Host was solemnly carried among the outstretched legs of us dogs, no disrespect to Pèpé.186
Pleasure comes in all shapes and sizes and its now what I live for. For instance: there are two polychrome baroque archangels on the altar of the Peterskirche in poses of flight and ecstacy that no human body could ever assume, and as far as I’m concerned they’re my definition of ART. For instance: the meals in Austria are deplorable, deplorable, but the Sacher-torte and the cup of chocolate that goes with it at the Cafe Tomaselli (founded 1704—Mozart as child, played with the little Tomaselli’s and no doubt lingered about when the cakes came out of the oven)—pleasure, that’s what they are, pleasure, and that’s what I live for.
After the close of the Festival on the 31st I’m going to linger in town a week.
Do you think I will ever regain my Former Viewpoint?
Anyway New or Old I count you among my Pleasures, and that’s what I live for.
Your
Thornton
152. TO ISABELLA N. AND ISABEL WILDER. ALS 4 pp. Yale
American Express Co. Zurich
Wed 11:20 A.M. Sept 15th or 16th 1937
Dear Ones:
In an hour or two I’m taking a train for Sils Maria or Sils-Berseglia (the sunny side). I get to St. Moritz at about half past 6: tonight. Lord, I was almost chilled off the whole excursion when I found I had to pass thru St Moritz and probably spend the night there. However, a good 3rd class pass. I’ll go to the whatever-little-hotel by the Station, honey. You know me. Anyway this is the “Worst Season” of the year for St. Moritz, tho’ the most beautiful.
Kinder,187 I’ve finished the Second Act of Our Town and its just lovely, as is the opening of Act III. I’m just a dandy dramatist, looks like.
What do you think of this enclosure?188 If the fella who had been collecting Reinhardt statistics five years ago had seen that he’d have fainted dead away.
Ma, there’s simply nothing doing in my life, but I’m—there’s only one word to describe it—happy. Now isn’t that funny. I do an hour’s work every morning, like silk off a spool and then I mosey the rest of the day. Walks toward all parts of the town and country; its a darlin restful place. To be sure it rains most of the time, but don’t wet much. Swiss rain’s different.
And I take it back that there are no mts here—they’re at the other end of the lake and they’re awfully big they shock you, they look so big, but they aren’t in sight much of the time.
Seems like I’ll finish Our Town by Friday and then I’ll polish up Nestroy-Molière for Reinhardt. (If Jed hears about that, he’ll be terrific.) Then I do the Prince of Baghdad which is the best of em all and the minute I finish that I’ll get on a boat and come home to you, everything forgiven.189
Stay just as sweet as you are, because that’s the way echoes of you are all thru the play and I don’t want to find that its unhistorical. Sure, one remark esp. that you made to us years ago is in the Second Act and it radiates the whole play.
Your loving son
Thornton
153. TO ISABELLA N. AND ISABEL WILDER. APCS. Yale
In the Post office, Zürich.
Thursday night. Oct 28 1937
Dear Girls:
Saturday night I leave for four nights in Paris to confer with Jed. Jed telephoned from London for 20 minutes the other night. He wants to know if “Our Town” would be a good play for the Xmas season in New York. Would it?!! And guess who might act the lanky tooth picking Stage-manager? Sinclair Lewis! He’s been plaguing Jed to let him act for a long time; and there’s a part for his famous New England parlor-trick monologues.190 Don’t tell anybody anything about it, but Ma, would you like to file into a New York Theatre with me to see Our Town—think it over. ¶ Heavenly autumnal weather here.
love to all
Thorny.
154. TO MAX REINHARDT. ALS 3 pp. (Stationery embossed Century Club / 7 West Forty-Third Street / New York) Theatermuseum
As from: 50 Deepwood Drive
New Haven, Conn.
Dec. 9 1937
Dear Prof. Reinhardt:
Just before Miss Adler called me up in Zürich I had been to Paris for a few days and there read to Jed Harris one of the two plays that I had been working on since the Summer. It goes into rehearsal next week and as it is still not yet quite finished, he has installed, or rather imprisoned me, in a house on Long Island and the work will be finished in a few days.
All this arose much earlier than I had intended and is now delaying further my opportunity to finish the play based on Nestroy’s Einen Jux will er sich machen.
My plan is to go away—possibly to Tucson, Arizona,—and finish it, as soon as “Our Town” opens in New York, which will be around New Year. How long that will take I do not know but I should think about a month.
It is still the height of my ambition that it would interest you.
As I told you in Salzburg, it is in no sense a translation. My second most important character does not appear in Nestroy at all. Into the middle of the First Act I have inserted the wonderful scene from Molière’s L’Avare where Frosine the marriage-broker tries to interest Harpagon in a young girl.191
I told Jed Harris firmly that you were to have the first “refusal” of the play, but I asked him to give me some help and advice on a certain difficulty I had met in the Third Act. To prepare him for it I read him the Second Act which he said was “a perfect piece of farce-comedy writing.”
At all events, I have grown very fond of it and am very impatient to resume work. If you liked I could send you the first Two Acts by January first; but I presume that you would rather receive the whole at one time.
Naturally, I may be mistaken about my fitness to write that kind of play; but I will never lose my desire of being some day able to offer you a text which it will interest you enough to produce.
Kindly give my regards to Frau Reinhardt.
Very sincerely yours
Thornton Wilder
155. TO J. DWIGHT DANA. ALS 4 pp. Private
Two days in New Haven.
Monday Dec 20 1937
Dear Dwight:
Theatre business is funny.
Especially Jed’s.
Went out to Chicago and saw 3 performances of Doll’s House. Enormous Opera-House packed with people.
Yet Jed’s losing money. 2 of the 4 stars are getting a thousand a week and percentages. Some performances (Mon & Tues. nights) sink to gross of 1100.
Jed says I get $150 a week, but it’s still to come—retrospective, too, on 10 weeks of tour.192
As to the new play, he mentions the (Dramatist Guild’s) contract; but still no contract.
I feel partly responsible for the delays because the play up until yesterday was still not all written.
He’s undoubtedly in money-trouble but:
It doesn’t prevent him from snatching me off the dock and imprisoning me in a cottage on Long Island—swankiest section, Roslyn and Cold Spring Valley—to finish the play.193 Butler and Cook and everything.
Theatre business is funny.
Frank Craven, our “star” has a contract, but I haven’t.194
However, I’ll insist on it from the first day of rehearsals—presumably after two postponements—the middle of this week.
I now live in New York at the Columbia University Club—(circa 6) West 43rd St.
I realize that all this contract delay is highly irregular, but I’m in such of mess of friendship-collaboration sentiment with Jed, and with the sense of guilt about the unfinished condition of the play that I can’t pull myself together to insist.
One way would have been to have asked Harold Freedman of Brandt & Brandt to serve as agent, but that would
have hurt Jed’s feelings mighty bad.
There’s a possibility that the play will be a smashing success—an old theatre-hand like Frank Craven seems to be thinking so.
Maybe not.
In the meantime Max Reinhardt in California telegraphs all the time to see play No #2—also still unfinished.
So I guess I’ll be financially all right if I can tide over this interium—including the various cheques I’ll have to draw for Xmas favors.
The Austrian Govt came through with that 56 dollars.
Enclosed the recipes for Mrs. Dana. Alice Toklas “prepared” one whole dinner. They look mighty elaborate to me; but good. And look at the extravagant materials they require. With the exception of the salad which is creole, they are old French family “secret cuisine.” The typist unfortunately bound them up in the wrong order—straighten’m out and it’s a dinner.
Until I can get the exact address for the Columbia U. Club I get my mail in NY at the AΔΦ Club 136 W. 44th St.
I got so many irons in the fire that here’s hoping one of them pans out o.k.
Cordially ever
Thornton
P.S. Of course I won’t sign the contract until I’ve sent it down to you.
156. TO GRACE CHRISTY FORESMAN. ACS 2 pp. (Card embossed A MERRY CHRISTMAS / AND / A HAPPY NEW YEAR) Yale
Dear Grace:
Just returned from the most rewarding trip I ever made abroad, to find myself in a turmoil of work: my own play goes into rehearsal next week—after divers rewritings I am doing every day—; and my adaptation of A Doll’s House opens Dec. 27 with continuous conferences and alterations.195
So I can only steal a few minutes to send you again all my most cordial greetings. Another year has gone by without my being able to go to Oberlin. I’d love to see every inch of it again and especially with Emily pointing out her favorite places and naming the new ones.