The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
Page 63
Went to NY for 3 days (lunch at the Players192 with Cass Canfield, Beulah Hagen and Isabel—in that private dining room—perfect); dinner at Laurent’s with Carol Brandt and her husband193—delightful time, but ouch!). Forgive me but I saw A Little Night Music194 without Hermione Gingold; I constantly forget that I am no audience for musicals. Was very depressed by the air-pollution; but have now recovered. Forgive the delay of this letter and accept
a load of love
Thorny
325. TO C. LESLIE GLENN. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Yale
June 24. 1973
Dear and Reverend Doctor:
So you became a Dr. at Stevens Poly195: Did you remember that I spent a week there as your guest—in your absence—taking walks and taking notes on the Hoboken that I would fantasticate in The Eighth Day almost half a century later?
x
I’m mortified and distressed and confused that there’s a sort of conspiracy going on around here to collect old letters that I wrote …. I think that gives the impression that I’m behind it and am pretentious and self-infatuated … I wasn’t supposed to know about it … Hell! It’s enough to make a fellow incapable of ever writing a spontaneous word again.196
x
Dear Les,—I shall never speak, read, preach, orate, act, or sing from any podium, platform, or even hearth-rug again. It’s at least 15 years since I’ve done it.
My revulsion from it was so sudden and so intense that it was like a prompting of The Inner Light, (or like Socrates’s daemon which never told him what to do, but what not to do.) Please convey graciously—as only you can—to your committee at the Corcoran197 my appreciation of the invitation and my regret that my disabilities—hypertension and deteriorating eyesight—prevent my accepting it.
x
Here’s a joke I heard. I told it to Isabel and she’s still laughing: Suppose that Wanda Landowska married Howard Hughes, divorced him and then married Kissinger—wouldn’t her name be
Wonder Who’s Kissinger, now?
Love to you and to dear Neville198 with felicitations on her birthday
And to you
Theophilus
P.S. I’m sending copies of this letter to the Archives of the International Geriatrics Society; the Lapaloosa Wilder Fan Club, Lapeloosa, Arkansas; and to the FB.I, who intercept all my sinister mail anyway.
TNW.
326. TO PEGGY AND ROY ANDERSON.199 ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Redwood
Oct 11. 1973
Dear Peggy—Dear Roy
Dear Roy Dear Peggy
The postman is bringing you my new book.200
It will certainly seem a strange book to you,—all about Newport! A Newport in large part spun out of my own head. You will be sur-prised—and probably intrigued at my presumption. But it all takes place in 1926—almost half-a-century ago. It should be read as one of those historical novels—highly romantic and extravagant.
I hope you find some amusement in it, but I hope you find also an affectionate picture of the beauty of the place and then I hope you find—what the first reviewers, even the more favorable ones, seem to miss—a deep emotion behind most of the stories (its really a dozen novellas which finally “come together” and justify it’s being called one novel<)>. Please do find yourselves sincerely moved from time to time.
You’ll be relieved to know that there’s not a single portrait drawn from life in the whole book—least of all the hero, who is part “saint” and part rascal, a combination that is fairly rare in fiction.
x
I haven’t been well these last months—had a lumbago (slipped disc) from sheer fatigue after finishing the book and had two separate 9-day hospitalizations. Am better now, but limp about cautiously.
Had to cancel my trip abroad. I was slow convalescing because I’m so old.
x
I should have written you this letter before you received the book but my energy ran low.
I hope all is well with you and that you are rejoicing under the “glorious trees of Newport”
Ever affectionately
Thornton
and love to Kitty-Pooh
327. TO HELEN AND JACOB BLEIBTREU.201 ALS 3 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Columbia
Nov 3 1973
Dear Jack; dear Helen:
Delighted to receive your letter, though very sorry to hear of the trouble you have both been having with your health. I too have just graduated from the use of a “walker” (or “aluminum petticoat”) having been in the hospital 21 days for a slipped disc—my convalescence has been slow because I’m 76—but I’ve been cheerful inside and I see you are, with your lively recall of the Harrisburg days.
Naturally I’m proud to inscribe the book to you. The reviews have been generally favorable—a few LEMONS to keep me humble, but the big city reviewers don’t seem to get the point of the book (reviewers don’t read for pleasure but for pay and that dulls the perception.) They think it a topical book, picturesque social history, etc.
The hero as a child dreamed of becoming a saint—well, he fell far short of it but the dream remained and could not die. The book is about the humane impulse to be useful, about compassion, and about non-demanding love.
I hope you find it occasionally funny, too, but a very serious intention lies under the surface and becomes more evident as the story developes.
I’m sure Helen will see that it contains a great deal of homage to women (to all except “Rip’s wife<”>!).202
May you both be restored to excellent well being soon.
Even in our all-too-short meetings, I felt I was privileged to know you
with much affection
Thornton
P.S. The book returns under separate cover.
TNW
328. TO MICHAEL KAHN.203 ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Yale
Nov. 8 1973
Dear Michael Kahn:
Greetings.
I do indeed remember your fine work on those plays and remain forever grateful to you.
I’m sorry about my delay in answering you, but it was necessary.
Several years ago I gave the rights to make a movie of The Skin of Our Teeth to Miss Mary Ellen Bute (Mrs. Nemeth) who made that delightful film fragment of Finnegans Wake.204 In the agreement between us I promised to veto any showing of the play within 50 or 60 miles of N.Y. She has been held up by financing but is eagerly planning the film.
I had to send out tactful feelers as to whether I remember the “mileage” correctly etc. At last she has replied that she would look favorably on a production of the play at Stratford.
Many have told me that they thought Miss Shelley205 to be the next authentic comedienne of this country: Ada Rehan → to Mrs Fiske—to Ina Claire—to Ruth Gordon. (Talullah was a wonderful being, but she never gave the same performance twice.) I’d only seen Miss Shelley in The Odd Couple but I spotted the real biz.
So all’s clear and I pass you over to Bill Koppelman at Brandt and Brandt.
I haven’t seen many SKIN but the ones I’ve seen where it worked best were in Germany. They knew what is was about: survival, terror and hope. They played it for the story line. They didn’t stop to fool with gimmicks—there are gimmicks enough in the play itself—They played them for real. Georgio Strehler in Milan, being an ardent communist, directed the Antrobus family as members of the hated bourgeoisie—idiotic, vapid poseurs. Others—over here—are so busy horsing around that the curtain-scenes are a mere shambles of noise and confusion and miss any dynamic force. (One ended the play with newsboys rushing down the aisles crying “Extra—the atom bomb has fallen”—catastrophe number four.<) >
It is my impression that the structure of the Stratford stage dissipates tension—everything becomes “spectacle.” The end of Act One is all focus’d about one fireplace: the end of Act Two is
all focus’d about one narrow pier leading out into the sea.
x
Menace hangs over the people in every act.
Sabina is only aware of it at intervals. She refuses to face facts—she thinks one should live for pleasure alone (for a short time she seduces Mr. Antrobus to her position.) Her pathos is when she sees that events are too big for her to grasp. Mrs Antrobus—absurd though she sometimes seems to be—is the pivot of the play. I’ve never seen an adequate Mrs A.—dear Helen Hayes didn’t have the voice or the stance206 …it’s hard to make humorless women sympathetic, but she must be sympathetic because of her single-minded will to survive.
Play it for melodramatic passion, and let the jokes take care of themselves,—the flare-up between father-and-son in the last act will be felt as organic in the play.
I’ll hope to see you during the spring and have a good talk.
In the meantime enjoy the project.
Ever cordially
Thornton Wilder
329. TO CATHARINE DIX WILDER. ALS 2 pp. Yale
Box 826 Edgartown Mass 02539
Sunday June 30 1974
Dear Dixie:
The weather’s been miserable down here and I keep hoping that its better up north by you.207 I don’t mind honest rain but we’ve been having two kinds of weather I don’t like: dull shilly-shally drizzle and hot weighty humidity—oppressive to man and beast. Whenever Isabel’s not around I tend to relapse into “bachelor squalor.” (I’m not really as untidy as that, but comparatively.) Since, like you I’m still convalescent (still, from that slipped disk) <(>I tend to let certain niceties lapse.) As not a soul has been in this house since she left except the master a measure of laxity can be presumed. Isabel arranged for a “girl” to clean up from time
Your father sent me a picture postcard of “Wilder Hall” in Oberlin. It didn’t exist when I was there and wasn’t named after our family; but I have happy memories of Oberlin and feel very loyal to it. Your father’s letters are a big lift to me. I’m happy he’s so full of élan; I’m not; in spite of the account above I’m more and more of a stick-in-the-mud. I take a nap after breakfast and a nap after lunch and three naps between sundown and dawn. But I’m cheerful inside. Like you I’m convalescent. I think my vitality will return to me if I cooperate with it. Please you do too; let Nature take its own time in healing.
Give my love to everybody at Blue Hill. Be my advocate and urge them to forgive me for being such a bad letterwriter. Please be your own best friend and take it easy, very easy. Give my very best regards to Jerry.209 Read three pages of Montaigne every day; play a quartet by Haydn every day; gaze at some pictures of Raphael every day,—they are the equible masters.
Lots of love, dear Dixie … don’t trouble to answer this unless there’s some useful thing I can do for you. Toujours ton vieux oncle qui t’aime tant210
330. TO ADALINE GLASHEEN.211 ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Hobart/William Smith
Oct 22, 1974
Dear Adaline:
Many thanks for sending me CALYPSO.212
It seems to me an admirable exposition—brings together all those strands of reference.
But you know me and Joyce. William James used to warn his students from lingering long in the realm of the “abject truth.” Joyce was certainly in relation with truth and all honor to him, but he also exhibited a delectation in the abject. We know many greater writers than he of whom that could not be said. How “unengaging” is the man we see in the letters and the biography. He was never “at home with himself,” dans sa peau,213 and had little warmth to extend to others,—neither were Eliot and Thomas Mann (cold fishes) nor Pond (in his later years—when young he was wonderfully generous-minded) nor, I suspect, Yeats. Yet how one would like to have been in familiar relations with Chek
I assume you know Empson’s paper214 on what happened after the close of Ulysses. I can give you it—Kenyon Review, Winter 1956. Just drop me a card (or phone); otherwise I’ll keep it in my Empson-collection.
Next time I’m in Zürich I’ll go to the Kronenhof
sez
your old friend
Thornton
Last photograph of TNW and his brother, spring 1975, Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston.
Last photograph of TNW and his brother, spring 1975, Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston. Private collection.
331. TO MARY M. HAIGHT.217 ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Yale
Some are saying that it’s April 12 1975
Dear Mary.
Before leaving for Europe (hope you had a lovely time) you sent me a beautiful American Wildlife Calendar. I was enjoying the pictures– the timber wolf, the woodchuck, the bison—and the mottos, Job, Walt Whitman. Dostoievsky, Dante—when I was thunderstruck to see my name—my birthday month, April … subscribed to a howling idiocy: “The best thing about animals is that they don’t say much.” I never wrote that! I never thought that! I yelled for Isabel and pointed it out to her, the tears rolling down my face. “Isabel! Somebody’s played a cruel joke on me<.> WHEN DID I SAY SUCH A THING? Let’s move to Arkansas until the laughter dies down.”
“Don’t you remember that Mr. Antrobus says it in The Skin of Our Teeth when the Dinosaur is whining about the Ice Age.”
But I, I didn’t say it.”
Then I thought of all the damaging things that could be brought up against me from that same play:
The Child Welfare Calendar: “A child is a thing that only a parent can love” Thornton Wilder.
The Anti-War Calendar: “God forgive me but I enjoyed the war; everybody’s at their best in wartime.” Thornton Wilder.
x
No more playwriting for me.
x
[The next day.]
I’ve calmed down. I read my calendar to the end—and loved the pictures and the legends. Isabel assures me that intelligent people like Mary and Gordon Haight don’t believe that I mean all those outrageous things that characters say in a book. I’m going to try and write something that doesn’t misrepresent me in a farmer’s almanac.
Affectionate greetings to you both and thanks for the beautiful picture-book
Old Thornt’
332. TO LEONARD BERNSTEIN. ALS 2 pp. LofC
Edgartown, Mass 02539
July 20 1975
Dear Leonard Bernstein:
As I told you on the phone:
I did not want an opera to be made of The Skin of Our Teeth.
But I admired and trusted you, and was persuaded. I trusted you and the fellow-workers you would select.
x
When your fellow-workers fell apart—who was left to write the book?218—I felt relieved of my commitment to you
x
Hereafter, while I’m alive no one will write or compose an opera based on that
play.
x
Torn from its context, Sabina’s opening aria “Oh! Oh! Oh!” sounds awful, unmotivated, synthetic vivacity.
The nearest thing to it would be Zerbinetta’s aria (or rondo).219 Who cares what her words are, except an implied comment on Ariadne’s abandonment? These words bear the weight of a crowded historical story of many facets.
x
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but my mistake was to have said ‘yes’ in the first place; yours, to have not followed through with the original plan offered me.
Always with much regard
Ever
Thornton
TNW and Isabel leaving Martha’s Vineyard for the last time, October 2, 1975.
TNW and Isabel leaving Martha’s Vineyard for the last time, October 2, 1975. Courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
333. TO DALMA H. BRUNAUER.220 ALS 3 pp. Private
50 Deepwood Drive
HAMDEN Conn 06517
November 11 1975
Dear Mrs Brunauer:
Many thanks for your thoughtful and sympathetic paper about my novel.
I have often been reproached for not having made a more explicit declaration of commitment to the Christian faith. If I had had a strict upbringing in the Catholic Church—like Mauriac or Graham Greene—I would certainly have done so. But I was a Protestant and I was thoroughly formed in the Protestant beliefs—my father’s, my school’s in China; Oberlin!—and the very thoroughness of my exposure to dogmatic Protestant positions made me aware that they were insufficient to encompass the vast picture of history and the burden of suffering in the world. I think that in The Bridge I took flight into the R.C. thought-world in order to avoid asking the same questions—the novel is a novel of questions, remember. And show that even the R.C. background broke down before those questions,—Brother Juniper was burned because he questioned.