by E. B. White
I haven’t any idea where you all spent your vacation this summer, because the last letter I had from you was dated in July. Cush’s family were at Cotuit. I am awfully glad that Stan got his job at Illinois—it is a fine university and it should be the sort of work that Stan is best fitted for. . . .
I am so sleepy tonight I can’t write anything very lucid or legible. But asleep or awake I am unreservedly
Yours faithfully,
Andy
• In Seattle, White landed a job with the Seattle Times that paid $40 a week, and he promptly traded Hotspur for a coupe. After he had been with the Times as a reporter for a few months, he was offered the chance to conduct a daily column, and jumped at it. However, it soon turned out that the purpose of the proposed “literary” column was to promote classified advertising—the lifeblood of most newspapers. The Times’s publisher, Colonel C. B. Blethen, informed White that the column would be set in the style of the want ads, would carry the title “Personal Column,” and would be unsigned. The first column in the series was largely rewritten by the colonel himself, and ran on the first page. It began, “I want what I want when I want it.” A day or two later the column disappeared from page one and surfaced in the want-ad section, where it was typographically indistinguishable from the ads. This would have discouraged most self-respecting columnists, but White was young and eager and glad of any chance. He continued to knock out the “Personal Column” every day until he was laid off as part of a general cutback in June 1923.
To ALICE BURCHFIELD
1222-17th Ave. N.
Seattle, Washington
[October 1922]
Dear Alice:
. . .At last I again have a local habitation. You see it above. I am pretty firmly rooted now in Mrs. Donohue’s boarding house, and already owe her a month’s rent. A week and a half ago I succeeded in getting a job on the Seattle Times (afternoon paper) so I am again engaged in what might be termed honest labor. I’m not sure about the honesty, but can vouch for the labor.
The Times is very highbrow, very conservative, very rich, and entirely unreadable. It is one of the most splendidly equipped newspaper organizations in the country—wonderful big new building occupying an entire block in the center of the city; and five enormous rotary presses. When you are sent out to get a story, you go in as much style as the Prince of Wales. It’s like this: You are sitting at your typewriter, simulating work. The city editor approaches rapidly. He speaks a name and a location, turns on his heel, and is gone. You press the elevator button and land downstairs, where a staff photographer and a staff automobile await you at the door.—Can you beat that for service?
I work from 7:30 a.m. until I’m through—which is anywhere from 2:30 to 11:30 p.m., according to what my assignments have been. At present I have no regular beat, but am on general assignment and rewrite, which means that one minute I am reporting a drowning at the waterfront, and the next minute interviewing a member of the Japanese Embassy. This afternoon I ran a children’s football contest.
Cush is still in Seattle but will probably be going south shortly, being unable to find a job here.
This is a very peculiar city. It rains here every day all winter long—and it has begun already. I find it a trifle depressing. . . . But I guess I’ll stay here, for I’ve at last got a job on a newspaper. . . .
Andy
To STANLEY HART WHITE
[Seattle, Washington]
[January 2, 1923]
Dear Stan:
Glad to get your letter. You are right about my not shining spittoons; all editors spit on the floor.
Received your Christmas present, and have not got round to reading it yet because, as the title suggests, it requires not less than half an hour. This would be as good a place as any delicately to mention that I didn’t buy you any present. I didn’t go in heavily for that sort of thing this year, principally because I am at my daily stint long before the stores open in the morning, and I stay at it intermittently until long after they close at night.
Even at this moment I am supposed to be out gathering material for a Sunday magazine story on what goes on in Seattle in the dead hours of night when all honest citizens slumber in their legitimate beds. With photographs.
The Times sicks me on feature stuff because the city editor discovered early in the game that city politics appear only in humorous light to me.
That’s all right. I get $4 extra for every story I write for the magazine, and at the same time avoid getting into controversy with the mayor and city councilmen.
Somehow or other I am afraid that I am doomed to be a newspaper reporter all my life—with all the dire connotations. I never could get up enough enthusiasm for marketing paper bags or building up effective sales representation for Dry-foot Shoes to warrant my going into any business that pays a living wage.
You are absolutely correct about becoming a professor. Next to being a ferryman it is the finest life.
I’ll endeavor to write you a letter sometime. Reply requested.
Yours,
En
To ALICE BURCHFIELD
[Seattle, Washington]
[February 1923]
Friday night
Dear Alice:
. . .There isn’t anything new. We had a snowstorm a while ago. It wasn’t very much of a one, but Seattle thought it was terrible. It was the worst blizzard in seven years, and all the streetcar lines were dead for three days. Employees of the Times were billeted in downtown hotels, and it was very dramatic. If it had been in any eastern city, nobody would have known that it was snowing. But out here, people take the weather seriously.
Last night I heard Carl Sandburg speak, and was so pleased I wanted to go right to Chicago. The contrast was all the more striking because of all the businessmen’s luncheons I have gone to in the last five months.
. . .I’m quite sick of the Times and of the dark skies of Seattle, and will be on my way to sunnier places if the spring fever hits me again the way it did the other day. Soon I’ll be out of a job again—which seems to be my native state. I had a lot of fun tonight making out my Income Tax report for the past year. My earnings amounted to $1,002.55. My exemption was $1,000. Therefore the tax was computed on $2.55. Four percent of that equals 10 cents. So I owe my country one dime, and will present myself tomorrow at the Bureau of Internal Revenue and settle up.
. . .I think if I should walk into the Phi Gam house I’d get kicked out for an old clothes man.—And I just bought a new suit the other day, too: $28.85. Oh, a stunning suit—real western cut, with peg top pants and everything. I’ve got it on now, and can hardly write for looking at myself. I bet if I had known my income tax was going to be so slight I would have really splurged and bought one for $32.50 instead. As it is I’m going to spend the difference for licorice chewing gum, for which I have a great passion. . . .
Yours,
Andy
• Cushman had left White in Seattle and returned to the East by way of California and Texas. The following letter refers to the burlesque travelogues the two men had written during their coast-to-coast journey. “In retrospect,” White later said, “my belief is that no publisher in his right mind would have published those travelogues.”
On their way west, while they lay over in Ithaca, Cushman and White had been asked to write a “Berry Patch” column for the Sun. As a lark, they divided the task. First White would write a poem, and sign it “Ho.” Then Cushman would add a paragraph, and sign it “Hum.” And so on, in alternation. Afterward the two men often used “Ho” (White) and “Hum” (Cushman) in their correspondence.
To HOWARD CUSHMAN
[Seattle, Washington]
[April 23, 1923]
Monday
Hum:
Without attempting to answer your recent letter I jump into the heart of things. As follows.
In re travelogues, I have suddenly undergone a change of heart. It seems to me, after a cold-blooded critical reading, that our scant effort
s—however lacking in some of the subtler virtues—are not without a certain merit. And as long as nothing with merit has any place in the Times, it occurs to me that my Column would not do justice to these articles.
In short, I really believe that, properly revised and cleverly illustrated, they would make, sir, a saleable BOOK. I say it seriously, deliberately, and with suitable genuflections.
It would be a small book. Each article would be a chapter. Instead of the asterisks, the sentences would be paragraphed. The book would be of pretty tough heavy paper, with ample type. Each chapter would have one full paged cartoon illustration.
The book, then, like the Rootabaga Stories of Carl Sandburg, would serve three generations—in fancy, boredom, and senescence. That is, the subject matter seems to me, on careful reading, to be ludicrous and fanciful enough to hold a child’s imagination; and on the o.h. the treatment is facile enough to please a reading public on the watch for pen gymnastics. . . .
One supreme virtue which seems to redeem the whole series in my mind is the belief that THE IDEA IS DIFFERENT—it hasn’t been done. The nearest thing seems to be the Kawa,1 which, after all, is not so very similar.
At any rate, don’t dally with this thought, but be full of strong vigorous action. Let’s hear at a near date what your reaction is, and also what the chances would be—if you favor the scheme—to secure illustrations.
One other thing—I think the name is very valuable: Westward Ho Ho. It is a saleable name, methinks.
Yours till we’re both immortal,
Ho
• When he was let go by the Seattle Times, White again found himself adrift, but instead of heading back east he boarded a ship, the S.S. Buford, bound for Alaska and Siberia. With money saved from his newspaper job, he was able to purchase first-class passage as far as Skagway. He counted on being able to work his way after that. Years later, White wrote an account of his Alaska experience, which he called “The Years of Wonder.” It is the final chapter of his book The Points of My Compass.
To JESSIE HART WHITE
Aboard S.S. Buford
Alaskan Gulf—light sea
Friday, August 3 or 4 [1923]
Darling Mother:
I shall mail this in Seward, trusting that it will catch a southbound ship. We are due there in a few hours.
It was the evening of July 24 that I put to sea in this ponderous vessel. With forty dollars I bought myself a first class passage to Skagway. I liked the name.
This is a sort of excursion cruise of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, made in the interest of extending trade relations. We have with us the Six Brown Brothers—who you remember played the saxophone with Fred Stone—also H. A. Snow, African big game hunter who made movies of wild animals. The ship is in command of Capt. L. L. Lane, well known whaleman and stampeder of the Northland. It is an extransport, and makes eleven knots.
In a small bay off Vancouver Island one evening we passed the Henderson. President Harding waved his handkerchief, and we stopped for a salute. In Cordova yesterday we heard news of his death.
A great change came over me at Skagway. I suddenly appeared in a white coat. I suddenly became associated with brooms, mops, pails of slop water, and other paraphernalia of the great service world. I suddenly—without warning the delightful wives and sisters of the members of the Chamber of Commerce—began to serve night lunch to them in the dining saloon. The shock to the company was terrific. Many of them had thought I was orthodox, socially. Lord, they had danced with me on those nights from Seattle to Skagway in the dance hall. I shall not attempt to describe in this letter my extreme enjoyment of all this. I don’t know how I happened to think of such a funny thing to do, but I did, and I am having a wonderful time.
We are going to the Pribiloff Islands, the ice pack of the Arctic, East Cape, Nome, and are going to lower the whaleboat after a whale.
I work from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the saloon. Saloon, Mother dear, has to do with eating, not drinking. I set table and prepare lunch for thirty, serve the lunch (with marvelous dexterity in heavy weather), clean off the tables, wash and wipe and put away all dishes, silver, and glasses, sweep down the companion way to the social hall, and shine the brass. The sun sets for a few hours around midnight. At 3 o’clock, when I step out on the forward deck to smoke a pipe, the north is bright. Up on the bridge, the mate paces back and forth, or peers through binoculars. The ship moves along with a swish and a throb. The headlands rise black in the east. The sun pops out, and snores grow throaty from the staterooms. I wipe a few more dishes, and pretty soon I flop. Flop is what the second steward calls going to bed.
This must be all. If I don’t mail this here, it will not arrive eastward. There is no mail service at the ice pack.
Love to all,
Andy
• When the Buford called at Seattle on her way back to San Francisco, White left the ship. After an evening on the town, he sold his car, paid his debts, and entrained for New York, with a stopover in Buffalo to see Miss Burchfield. He then returned to the house in Mount Vernon he had left abruptly a year and a half before and to the same problem from which he had tried to win a reprieve: how to earn a living in the world of letters.
To ALICE BURCHFIELD
[September 17, 1923]
Mount Vernon, New York
48 Mersereau Avenue
Dear Alice:
I have just been sent to bed. But as long as there is a little tobacco left in the can and as long as the obliging cricket outside the window continues to sing queer little ballads, I think bed is not to be considered. The cricket must be a kinsman of the one I heard in your back garden: he knows the same tunes.
Well—I went to Ithaca. If ever you want something to warm the cockles of your heart, stay away from the campus about a year and a half—then amble back at leisure, when nothing stirs in the long halls and only a few of the old inhabitants are about to make it real. I was so glad it was not a reunion—I didn’t have to wear a colored hat or get drunk.
There was a light in Adams. Mrs. Adams and a couple of friends were there. The notorious professor was in Washington, D.C., I was told. Sunday was a sunny day; and I had hardly started on a stroll when Uncle Pete [Albert W. Smith] came stepping along, a newly completed biography under his arm, a book of verse in his pocket. He beguiled me to his cubbyhole in Sibley, where he read me little things and then he sauntered out again with me and showed me the sights.
I had dinner at the Adamses’. About twenty persons, as usual. Ev and Tote were at least three feet taller than I’d ever seen them before. Gertrude was in bed with a pain, and there was talk of appendicitis.1 Mrs. Adams’ mother was there—a very ancient little person whom I’d never met. After dinner I wandered across to Willie Strunk’s house. Did I tell you I had sent him a post card from Medicine Hat, just as I’d promised a year ago? Anyway, Willie grasped his coat lapels in the orthodox Strunkish fashion and mumbled: “What do they do in Medicine Hat? What do they do in Medicine Hat?” It was wonderful. He told me (among other bits of news) that D—— S—— had completed an extraordinary romance with the daughter of a coal baron. There was mention of a lightning courtship, of at least two trips to Europe, and of $50 bills being passed under the table from the coal baroness to the groom. . . .
This is the third page, and I haven’t started yet to tell you that it was good to be in Buffalo again—and that’s what this letter is supposed to be all about: and is, really. You were like the first channel light in a passage East, and the first is always the most welcome to mariners.
It seemed a shame that you were in the midst of tonsils, and I’ve been wondering whether walking about in the street did you any harm. I’m a very bum sympathizer when I’m around persons that have something wrong with them—probably because when I get low myself I don’t like to have people snooping around and suggesting things—so if I didn’t keep talking about your throat, it was just a habit I have, and didn’t mean that I wasn’t sorry. Tell me when you are goin
g to have an operation and I’ll come up and keep the nurse from giving you too much ether.
Sitting on this porch is great. The laundryman comes down the street with the same shambling horse that I used to know (wait till he sees the filth of some of my clothes). Across the street a house is going up; and nice fundamental, creative sounds come from there. The locust trees shiver a bit, even in the sunlight; and the poplars are talking together in such loud whispers I can hear them way over here. They are discussing September (if you must know). The laundryman’s horse adjusts his ears and approves of the month: the flies are not bad and it’s cooler up the hills.
Pretty soon I hope to get the letter from you that went to Seattle. And maybe an answer to this one as well. Please get well again and start to eat things.
Andy
• When White drifted away from the East in 1922, he also drifted away from Alice Burchfield. He was gone a year and a half on his search for adventure, and the long separation put a great strain on the relationship. The two continued to correspond, but the bloom was off. Alice had had about enough of her suitor’s footlessness and irresolution, and their long-drawn-out affair finally collapsed when White, back east again, dispatched the letter that follows—a letter that must have caused him much anguish to write and that must have caused Miss Burchfield even more pain to receive. She took it in her stride, allowed the correspondence to drop, and eventually married a less errant Cornellian, James F. Sumner, with whom she had been associated as an undergraduate in Cornell’s Dramatic Club.
To ALICE BURCHFIELD
[New York]
[Spring 1924]
Sunday
Dear Alice:
Today I returned from Florida and found your letter. . . . If you think I have treated you badly, I guess it is true; but things turned out the way they did because of my stupidity and not because of any subtle intentions. If I had been a normal person two years ago, I would have either besieged your doorstep, or else I’d have gone off and sent you a polite note saying, “My dear Lady: Having besought your hand without success, I shall consider the incident jolly well closed and hoping you are the same . . .” But I was more of a dub. I went away and proceeded to consider the incident jolly well closed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and on the other days (being both chicken hearted and ignorant) I felt qualms of conscience, and remembering youthful vows of constancy I proceeded to indite safe-and-sane letters under the guise of friendship—they turned out to be as safe as rattlesnakes and as sane as could be expected from me. We weren’t friends, so the friendly letters were flivvers. The strange part is that you failed to discover how ridiculous I was a long while ago. You even answered the letters. You mustn’t forget that. I hope I’m not being more blunt than’s necessary, but I don’t want misunderstanding to run along any further. When I saw you last fall, it seemed to me that any doubts which you might have had concerning my “status” (if you want to call it that) were cleared up. I certainly talked about the weather. And then I began to receive letters from you saying that you were tearing up your initial attempts. I wasn’t too dense to comprehend—but I don’t think you realized that I did comprehend. At any rate, the postscript to Ruth’s [Alice’s sister’s] letter didn’t leave much to the imagination. It was a very wonderful thing to receive, but a rather awkward thing for me to acknowledge. I virtually answered it by omitting to answer it. You see, you (and not I) were the one who continued to row after the boat had sunk.
