The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

by Thornton Wilder

  170. TO SIBYL COLEFAX. ALS 2 pp. NYU

  Cuernavaca, Mexico. Feb 7 1939

  Very dear Sibyl:

  Your letter from Settignano reached me here and I loved it for itself and for the thought that you were receiving beautiful sights and sounds and company. When I came to the words: “Perhaps you’d say one must not have such oases in these times,” I burst out laughing. Imagine ascribing such a sentiment to me. The more such restorative hours come to such gallant standard-bearing souls as Sibyl, the better for all concerned.

  I, too, am in a beautiful place, but without any such wonder-talker as Bernard Berenson.

  It’s beautiful here. I can raise my eyes and see Popocatapetl,—lines second only to Fujiyama. And I have seen pyramids older than Egypt’s; and gold-leaf baroque corruscating and festooning ad majorem gloriam Dei,1 and a wonderfully touching Indian peasant life and art, and miles of this extraordinary renascence in contemporary fresco-painting.

  Mexico’s a great experience, but I can’t work here and after four weeks of it I’m ignominiously crossing the border into my own country to walk, and bask and work at Corpus Christi, Texas, by the sea.

  There are a number of reasons in many kinds:

  I can’t sleep nights because of the altitude.

  I can’t shake off a cold because of the alkali dust. The dry season began last October!

  My eyes ache in the whitest sunlight I ever saw.

  I can’t digest the food, a highly specialized food.

  And I can’t rid myself of the anguish behind the landscape. Oh, Mexico’s deep deep in blood and iniquity. The world is, but even China doesn’t whisperingly remind you of it continually as this place does.

  First, in these old civilizations,—there is one temple here where there were six thousand human sacrifices a year. Then the terrible era of the conquistadores, with their half-frivolous half-hysterical slaughter. Then the great land-owners and whip-bearing exploitation of the Indians; and now graft, graft, fine words and graft.

  I take my walks through Indian villages, and through the streets of the towns, and there it all is: the patience, the hopelessness and the nobility of the Indian. And as for the Mexicans, their appearance, their taste, their women, their business practices, best not to go into that through the postal service.

  So compare my walks (I’m always harping on my walks, but my walks are my work) compare them with those of the Salzkammergut, or the Zurichersee, or Tucson, or New Hampshire, or even the West Indies.

  (At this minute it is sunset, and the sunlight lies red-gold over the foreground, with its bougainvilleas and oleanders and the mountains in the distance are in blue and purple veils and the tops of the volcanoes are rose snow.)

  ¶¶ The Merchant of Yonkers closed after a five-week run. I hope Alec. is right when he says that it will have a revival after a few years, in the American idiom, and declare and justify itself. In the meantime the text has gone to the printer’s and you’ll receive a copy before long.2

  “Our Town” is in Chicago doing good business through a precedent-making blizzard.

  I have been wrestling with the Alcestiad and have reached a temporary truce.3 I will resume the struggle in Texas. It’s all a matter of diction. The structure is clear; the idea-life is exciting; but how do they talk. I keep trying to find an utterly simple English prose, but it keeps coming out like a translation of a Greek classic, at one moment, and like a self-conscious assumption of homely colloquial speech at the next. I foresaw that it would be hard, but not as hard as this. It looks to me as though I ought to do it in blank-verse. I’ve long known that I’d have to come to verse some day, but to begin it now—with this play—would mean a year of studio, of constant exercises in verse, of disciplining myself; for to change one’s medium is to change one’s mind. Yes, some day I am to write verse, but I think I should approach it through the lyric. To enter it by way of blank-verse is to begin at the end, and a costing job. However, it is still possible that it can be done in prose and that Texas will show me how. Those heroic simplifications of the Greek myths must be met with some special strangeness in the approach: we’ve seen how Cocteau and Giraudoux did it, with iridescent concetti4; and Landor did it, with a mixture of dying-fall musicality and latinizing aphorisms. I want my way to be a plainness, a purity, an absence of rhetoric that will be a strangeness in itself, but it’s hard.

  If it turns out to defeat me—defeat me, I hope, only temporarily—because the subject is golden, there are a host of other subjects crowding in the notebooks, and most of them come with innovations (i.e. revivals of lost excellences) of form. I’m surer and surer that explicit scenery and the naturalistic method have run the theatre into the ground. There will be from me no repetitions of ‘Our Town’ but there will be the freest possible treatment of time and place. However, I hope to be writing to you about my work from Texas before long.

  Guess who was on the boat from Havana to Vera Cruz? Beverley Nichols.5 I liked him. Left a little sad by the emergence from the precocious twenties, but very nice.

  I’m sorry that in my abrupt plunge from New York I was not able to meet Sir Ronald Storrs6; his letter has just been forwarded to me. I’ve always heard that he is one of the most delightful people in the world and I would have loved to have known him.

  Today’s newspaper tells of Chamberlain’s affirmation that England will associate itself with France if the latter is attacked. What a year last year was! Will next year be living just day by day under allowances of hope? Best not count our disasters before they’re hatched.

  At all events I catch myself daydreaming that you will be able to accept Mrs Crane’s invitation to come to New York.7 And then, too, if I get a good stint of work done I’m coming over. But always always I send you my devoted affection

  Ever

  Thornton.

  171. TO ELIZABETH N. PAEPCKE.8 ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / New Haven, Connecticut) Schlesinger

  March 26 1939

  Dear Pussy; dear Mrs Thompson:

  Your telephone call put me in such a quandary that I couldn’t make out whether the performance had been advanced from last Friday to Wed the 22nd or postponed until Wednesday the 29th and I’m afraid I’ve lost my chance to send a telegram.9

  My quandary was this: the impossibility of explaining over the telephone the fact that I have never sat in the audience and seen one of my plays. Even hovering about the back rows I have never seen an entire performance. (except when taking part which is far from “seeing.”)

  Alec. Woollcott arranged a performance—and I hear and can believe that it was quite wonderful—up in Vermont—among real Grovers’ Corners people; and yet I could not bring myself to go.

  I use to be bewildered and inclined to scoff at Eugene O’Niel when I heard that he never attended his own plays, but now I understand.

  The mixed emotions; the intensity of attention; the sensitiveness at variations in rendering; self consciousness, embarrassement, self-deprecations.

  All I can do is to ask you to understand, or if not understand, forgive.

  If there is still a chance of my being able to send a telegram let me know.

  Cordially ever,

  Thornton

  172. TO HUNTINGTON T. DAY.10 ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed The Graduates Club / One Hundred Fifty-five Elm Street / New Haven, Connecticut) Private

  Friday morning

  Sept. 8 1939

  Dear Mr. Day:

  As I told you my aim is to warn Mr. Lesser that I cannot take so large a share in the planning of the movie, since so large a share would inevitably lead to the general impression that I completely authorized and was responsible for the final picture.11

  Mr. Lesser is in Clayton New York (Thousand Islands regions on the St. Lawrence, getting a long overdue rest); he planned to meet me in New York Tuesday the 12th for five days of continuous work on the movie-script

  I suggest sending him the following telegram:

&n
bsp; <”>Dear Mr. Lesser

  much worried by your final indication that a five day collaboration between us on a first working script could be interpreted as my ultimate authorship and responsibility for the finished picture stop for me responsibility always means close conscientious detailled collaboration throughout and as I told you I cannot extend that at this time stop I suggest that I meet you in upper New York for one day more of congenial planning with financial compensation and then I withdraw. always extending to you and the picture my cordial best wishes but unable to serve as partial worker where the responsibility should rest on a screen writer continuously present stop hope that you see my point of view in all good will and friendship sincerely yours

  Thornton Wilder”

  Will you phone my house 7-3436 as to whether you approve of this and I will send the telegram off.

  cordially

  T. Wilder

  173. TO SOL LESSER. ALS 2 pp. UCLA

  Monday Oct 9 1939

  50 Deepwood Drive

  New Haven, Conn.

  Hope you don’t mind my writing you on my “work paper”, it’s a sign of congeniality.

  Dear Sol:

  Returning to New Haven I found the yellow pages of corrections and now have everything before me.12

  The cuts in Mrs. Gibbs-Mrs. Webb shelling beans are all right with me; also the transferred speeches from the Stage-Manager to Mrs Gibbs in the Last Act. Also the omission of the Birthday Scene from the opening sequence. And I have always realized that 88-92 would require cuts.

  Of the new lines the only one that sounds out of character is shot 142 page 84 “Promise me I’ll always be your girl.”

  Now that you’ve restored the opening breakfast-and-going-to-school-scene are there still some lines you want from me, or is this material from the book sufficient?

  Now for some comments on the whole:

  My only worry is that—realistically done—your Wedding Scene won’t be interesting enough, and that it will reduce many of the surrounding scenes to ordinary-ness.

  Did you ever see a Wedding Scene on Stage or Screen that followed through normally?

  Either it was interrupted (“Smiling Through”, and “Jane Eyre” and “It Happened One Night”) or it showed the Bride hating the groom (“The Bride the Sun Shined On”), or some other irregularity.13

  On the stage with “Our Town” the novelty was supplied by

  economy of effect in the scenery.

  The minister was played by the Stage Manager.

  The thinking-aloud passages

  The oddity of hearing Mrs Soames’ gabble during the ceremony.

  The young people’s moments of alarm.

  You have none of these. By a close-up of Mrs. Soames even her gabble will lose its oddity and shock. Here is a village wedding and the inevitable let-down when it all runs through as expected.

  Now, Sol, it’s just you I’m thinking about; will you have as interesting a picture as you hoped?

  This treatment seems to me to be in danger of dwindling to the Conventional. And for a story that is so generalized that’s a great danger.

  The play interested because every few minutes there was a new bold effect in presentation-methods.

  For the movie it may be an audience-risk to be bold (thinking of the 40 millions) but I think with this story it’s a still greater risk to be Conventional. This movie is bold enough in the last sequence, but apart from the three characters who talk straight into the audience’s face, there’s less and less of that novelty and freedom and diversion during the first forty minutes.

  I know you’ll realize that I don’t mean boldness or oddity for their own sakes, but merely as the almost indispensible reinforcement and refreshment of a play that was never intended to be interesting for its story alone, or even for its background.

  I shall probably have some notions to send you soon,—I’ve asked my sister to read the script, too,—and shall be writing you again soon.

  All my best to all, as ever.

  y‘r’ old

  Thornton

  174. TO WILSON LEHR.14 ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / New Haven, Connecticut) Yale

  Nov. 26 1939

  Dear Wilson:

  Please forgive me being so long in thanking you for the beautiful pot of aster-chrysanthemums (that’s all I know about’m; but I enjoy’m none the less). I water them faithfully and they stand in the window getting a lot of sunlight and making chlorophyl like mad per since Creation. The delay was due to the fact that Sol Lesser is in town again and worried about his script and requiring a big upset in my daily working routine. He’s now thinking of employing Lillian Hellman as the scriptwriter and Sam Wood (“Mr. Chips”) as the director.15

  Suppose Lillian let go and showed us a script revealing how everybody in Grover’s Corner loathed one another, with some pretty dubious goings-on re Rebecca Gibbs’ tattling.

  The old Beaux Stratagem progresses but I don’t really think there’s any practical entertainment there.16

  I’m getting fond of my N.Y. apartment and the long quiet hours that pass. Finnegan’s Wake still makes great inroads into my time and I’ve untangled some more of its knots, but there remain a million.

  Stop in for a drink some time when you’re free, and again many thanks for the happy thought

  Ever

  T.N.

  175. TO GERTRUDE STEIN AND ALICE B. TOKLAS. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed The Graduates Club / One Hundred Fifty-five Elm Street / New Haven, Connecticut) Yale

  50 Deepwood Drive

  New Haven, Conn.

  Jan. 28 1940

  Dear Ones:

  Last year I lost my little black engagement-diary-address book.

  Is your address 5 or 15 or something else rue Christine? Would the postman correct such a mistake? All my notions of France go into my doubt; so I shall send this to the post ladies of Belley; they too have a very low opinion of all letters not addressed to themselves.17 But I think (some day) they will forward this to you, just to get it out of their way.

  I have no news.

  Health, inertia, and a shocking busyness over trifles

  I have a New York apartment until March 15, and I am all adazzle about my new acquaintance, New York. Walks, walks, subway rides, then more walks. To all proposals—dinners, committees, lectures,—I say no—not as formerly a defensive anxious apologetic no, but the easy no of the indifferent and absent-minded. I don’t go to the theatre,—this is the year that the movies have finally risen and surpassed the stage.

  I like it.

  Just as that summer at Peterborough I laid everything aside and read The Making of Americans,18 read, and reread, and made cross-references and went about in a waking dream of complete immersion in it; so I have been for months engaged with Finnegans Wake, decoding that unbroken chain of complicated erudite puzzles. I’ve only skimmed the surface, but I know more about it than any article on it yet published. Finally I stopped, and put it away from me as one would liquor or gambling; I ceased tearing off to the public library to verify Persian moon goddesses, and the astronomical conditions over the British Isles in January, and the Danish word for goat.

  But it was wonderfully absorbing while it lasted.

  Mabel Luhan is in New York and has opened a salon. The first Friday night it was on Civil Liberties; the second: T.W. will elucidate eight pages of Finnegans Wake; the third Psychoanalysis and Medecine; the fourth on Censorship. I had much hope that it would be a Something, but it wasn’t. It takes a will of iron, and Mabel hasn’t that, so it’s petering out.

  The movie magnate for “Our Town” confused because I would accept no money for the interminable conferences over the script, gave me an automobile for Xmas. I don’t like ’em, but there it is. So when my apartment-lease is up I shall take it and drive far away.

  I had some hours with Robert Haas and he has sent me his thesis which I like very much; now I am eager to go back and reread The Geophophical Histo
ry. I hope he goes on to do a very very good book about you. I wish I could hear Bob Davis’s discussion of the Haas thesis. His aperçus would leap farther and brighter than Haas’s, but his soul has gone murky like his English style. Clouds of smoke.19

  A letter from Sir Francis20 asking if I could see any kind of call or engagement for him in America. The galleries and dealers; the glazed paper women’s magazines;—he must have closer approaches to them than I have. I’m still deep in Austrian exiles and in trying to establish Max Reinhardt in a dramatic school in New York or in a college near here, and I’ve had some success in finding teaching posts and pension grants etc, etc. for teachers and writers, but I wouldn’t know where to turn for Sir Francis.

  The Hutchins were in New York for a few days during the holidays.

  It would take the whole of a drive to Vienne and back to lay that situation before you.

  I summarize it by saying that Maude’s going crazy and in such a way that one is torn between pitying her for a desperately sick mind and hating her for a vulgar pretencious tiresome goose. Such dances as she leads Bob, with tantrums, caprices, changes of mind and talk, talk, talk.