by E. B. White
To JEAN FLICK
The New Yorker
25 West 45th Street
[February? 1927]
Wednesday
Dear Jean—
Gus has TOLD ALL (in strict confidence) and I would like—even this early—to send you my excited greetings and wish you joy. Having deeply pondered over the whole felicitous affair, I can see that it is surrounded with the greatest happiness—and I know that when you have lived in the vicinity of this Mr. Lobrano for as long a time as I have you will discover that it alone is almost boon enough to make life worth living twenty-four hours of the day. At any rate this hurried note is just to assure you that all these parlous and sudden goings-on have the UNQUALIFIED ENDORSEMENT of this wizened old roommate—who is not merely willing but eager to have his most precious charge ship off and get married when he selects so delightful a lady.
With love to you both,
Andy
To HAROLD ROSS
c/o Bert Mosher
Oakland, Maine
[September 1927]
Dear Mr. Ross—
. . .I am on my vacation.1 The reason I chose Maine is because there is a lady here who gets the N.Y. Times and she lets me have it after she is through. She uses P.l to light fires with, but I never cared much for aviation. Also I have a cricket. I will bet you haven’t got a cricket. All you have is Ralph.2 I have named my cricket “Ralph” and he sings to me by scraping his legs together.
My vacation has done me a world of good: I have taken off about fifteen pounds and am gradually getting back my old pulmonary trouble. There is a spare bedroom in my shack, and I trust that if you are ever up this way you will feel free to drop in.
Very sincerely yours,
E. B. White
Ralph is trying to get out underneath the door. I think he wants to make water.
To HAROLD ROSS
[New York]
[December? 1927]
Dear Mr. Ross:
Here is the address book you were hinting for. Perhaps a few words of explanation would not be amiss. It was bought at Brentano’s and cost seven fifty, a little more than I had expected to pay. It is of hand-tooled leather, as opposed to the ordinary machine-tooled kind which is every bit as good probably. It is a “red” book with a decorative border of “gold” and has a little pencil at the side which you will never use because it isn’t practical. There is a good chance that you will never use the book either, but I took that into consideration when I bought it and will not be emotionally affected one way or the other. The filler or “pack” is removable, which is a handy wrinkle except that Brentano’s have none of them in stock and it would be a lot of work to hunt one up any place else. The filler is indexed, the letters of the alphabet being alternately blue and red, possibly for some reason which you can figure out.
Now as to spirit of the gift. The spirit of the gift is very good. At first I resented the idea of having to give anything to my employer. I don’t owe you anything! Everything I have had at your hands I have worked for, often twice. But then it occurred to me that it might be worth my while to give you an address book in order to “get in strong” with you. And I might add that all my previous employers, when Christmas came round, received from me a little package of ground glass and porcupine quills. But my relations with you have always been pleasant, and as Ring Lardner so aptly put it you are a wonderful friend you. With a lot of hard work and honest effort on your part, I see no reason why we cannot continue on this friendly basis almost indefinitely. Please enter my name in your address book 12 W. 113 St. Chelsea 52761 and believe me
Merry Christmas,
E. B. White
Thank you for your many courtesies, which I often brood over.
To HAROLD ROSS
16 Juin [1928]
Guaranty, France
Dear Friend-across-the-Sea:
I will enclose a couple of clippings from the Paris Herald—which is the most entertaining morning newspaper I’ve ever read (probably because reading it is not a preface to going to work). I am also sending under separate cover a little article of some 35,000 words, called “Dr. Vinton.”1 After you are through laughing at it and wondering why I ever bothered to write it, give it to Morton [an office boy]—who once told me he enjoyed everything I wrote regardless of whether he quite understood it. I often think of that when I am lonely.
I am alone in Paris and evidently look it. Immoral women approach me and lay their hand on my arm (which is derived from a ceremony in the Roman church called “the laying on of the hands”). Three of them in an automobile approached me the other evening and asked me if I was lonely and wanted to go somewhere for a drink. I said “No man is lonely who has Jesus on his side,” and they evidently saw my point for they drove away, pouting.
I want to go down to the Coast somewhere swimming but am prevented from doing so by my inability to speak French, and hence my inability to get to the railroad station. When I try to say the words I become ridiculous and when I don’t try to say them I come to a standstill. English is not spoken at my hotel, but they serve me breakfast in bed and I get through the rest of the day by wandering from one cafe to another and saying the single word “Beer!” which is very sustaining and amusing. As soon as Gus gets back from Amsterdam I will get him to put me on a train for Nice, and then I will spend the rest of my life trying to talk my way out of the railroad station at Nice—which might make a little Talk item.
Best love,
White
To HOPE CROUCH
25 West 45th Street
[October 1928?]
Friday
Dear Hope:
I can’t find anything the matter with Baby, which is very unusual after he has been visiting, and I have been trying to get round to thanking you for same.1 Also fish delivered in good condition. Sorry it was necessary for me to break window to get them, but when I want my animals I want my animals.
As you probably know, I have very definite rates of payment for animal trouble, and other domestic inconveniences. It is a sliding scale which runs something like this: Bird overnight, ice cream soda; fish overnight, bon bons; dusting and sweeping, flowers; bird one week, evening at a moving picture theater; bird and fish one week, morning in Wanamaker auditorium; alligator one month, week-end in Atlantic City; laying rugs and making curtains, ermine coat; laying rugs and making curtains and keeping bird and fish and alligator for one month, offer of marriage or equivalent. Your case comes under head of keeping bird and fish two weeks, which according to my scale merits either an evening at the legitimate drama or an afternoon at the Columbia-Cornell football game (Nov. 3), whichever the lady designates.
My animal invitations always prove embarrassing to the lady, because she always suspects (and rightly so) that the invitation is tendered merely in line of duty, and spends the evening grousing quietly to herself. Therefore, I always extend the invitation with the definite understanding that if the lady wishes to consider it a perfunctory affair, she is at perfect liberty to do so and can spend all or part of the evening grousing quietly to herself if she wants to, without in any way impairing the general quality of the entertainment. So I trust you will be good enough to reply, choosing roughly between the football game and the legitimate drama, and I hope from the bottom of my perfunctory heart that you will favor me with an acceptance. Until I hear from you I shall be living on tenterhooks—and you know what fun that is.
EBW
To HAROLD ROSS
[1928?]
[Interoffice memo]
MR. ROSS:
Re progress of my efficiency.
You will note that in this week’s batch of newsbreaks, the break “A blackjack in the hands of a colored choirmaster” was prepared by the “paste on the sheet” method, instead of the old “type and relax” method. Following is a report of the experiment, which I conducted only because you had specifically requested it.
Time elapsed looking for paste: 4 min.
Loosening paste with
water to make it sticky: 2 min.
Trimming the clipping so it would look neat: 5 min.
Applying paste to clipping and fingers 1 min.
Pressing clipping to paper and withdrawing sticky fingers 11⁄2 min.
Trip to men’s comfort room to wash hands 2 min.
Time elapsed in men’s room talking to friend I met there 30 min.
Trip back 1⁄2 min.
Time elapsed trying to get paste-up break into typewriter to write line 1 min.
Re-pasting clipping because it came off 5 min.
Time spent thinking up witty note to send you about experiment 1 min.
Time spent writing ” ” to you ” ” 8 min.
Total elapsed time on newsbreak “A blackjack in the hands” one hour 1 min.
Conclusion re efficiency: Hooey.
EBW
IV
“THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DECISION”
1929–1930
* * *
• Nineteen twenty-nine was a big year for White—his first two books were published (one in collaboration with Thurber) and he and Katharine Angell were married. The year, however, did not start on a note of either literary triumph or domestic felicity. Here are the first two entries in his journal:
January 1–23 W. 12. In the morning rain—sorrowing on the broad flat roof outside my window, in the afternoon heavy fog, turning the trees to plumes, the buildings to castles, and the lights to balloons. Walking twice around the reservoir this afternoon in the fog, resolving a problem: whether to quit my job and leave town telling no one where I was going. I got no sleep last night trying to resolve it. . . . This year I dread—it will make me thirty before it’s done with me.
January 3. Yesterday hard at work, dutiful at the office, for all my great fuss the day before about going away. But I thought of a funny drawing, and so was reconciled to my lot. Besides, one of the persons I like best in the world is Thurber. Just being around him is something. I have just walked to the corner and bought tomorrow’s paper and found my poem [“Rhyme for a Reasonable Lady,” a love poem to K. S. Angell, in F.P.A.’s Conning Tower]. . . .
On a tip from Mrs. Angell, Eugene Saxton of Harper & Brothers had become interested in White’s writings and had agreed to publish him. The Lady Is Cold, a collection of his poems, came out in the spring. Is Sex Necessary?, a spoof on the heavy sex books of that day, came out in the fall. On November 3, White noted in his journal: “Tonight at Mount Vernon I overheard Mother and Father discussing the sex book. Father said, ‘Well, I don’t know what you think about it, but I’m ashamed of it.’” It was a sobering moment for a young writer. Ten days later, he gave his parents a second jolt—he married a divorcee with two children.
Katharine Sergeant Angell, the bride, was a transplanted Bostonian, youngest of three daughters of Charles S. Sergeant, vice-president of the Boston Elevated Street Railway. Her mother had died when she was five years old, and she had been mothered by Mr. Sergeant’s unmarried sister Caroline, “Aunt Crully,” who came to Brookline to take charge of the household. Katharine went from Miss Winsor’s school to Bryn Mawr, graduated in 1914, and a year later married Ernest Angell, a young lawyer in Cleveland. When the United States got into the war, Angell joined up, won a commission, and disappeared overseas for the duration, leaving his young wife in Cleveland with their infant daughter, Nancy—not an auspicious beginning for a marriage. Katharine took a job and stayed on in Cleveland until the house got too cold to survive in, then returned to her father’s in Brookline. On Angell’s return from the war, the couple lived briefly in Cleveland, then moved to New York, where he went to work with a law firm.
When Mrs. Angell joined the staff of The New Yorker in August 1925, she realized that her marriage was breaking up. She had taken the editorial job partly to keep her mind off problems at home and partly to develop some skills against the day when she might have to be self-supporting. There were two children now—Roger was born in 1920. In the winter of 1929, with the magazine celebrating its fourth birthday, she moved out of her house on the Upper East Side and took an apartment at 16 East 8th Street; and when summer arrived she went to Reno for a divorce. On November 13, she married E. B. White. They were both back at their desks the next day, preferring to delay until springtime the honeymoon they planned in Bermuda.
Although they had been aware of their growing attachment to each other long before her divorce became final, the courtship was not smooth. White, always wary of entanglements, found himself in love with an older woman, mother of two. Katharine, with her New England background, was reluctant to accept the failure of her first marriage and was concerned about the problems a divorce and remarriage would create for her children, and whether marriage to White made sense anyway, considering the disparity in their ages. Finally, they managed to shed their anxieties long enough to drive out to Bedford Village, New York, and get married in the Presbyterian church on the village green. They had told no one of their plan, for fear the news would start an endless round of debates. Only Katharine’s dog, Daisy, went along as an attendant. White, who hated ritualistic occasions of all kinds, remembered the ceremony with pleasure. “It was a very nice wedding—nobody threw anything, and there was a dog fight.”
He added: “I soon realized I had made no mistake in my choice of a wife. I was helping her pack an overnight bag one afternoon when she said, ‘Put in some tooth twine.’ I knew then that a girl who called dental floss tooth twine was the girl for me. It had been a long search, but it was worth it.”
To STANLEY HART WHITE
[New York]
[January 1929]
Tuesday
Dear Stan:
I was moderately pleased to receive a letter from a personal follower and brother, on this cold day. Brothers, I have noticed, never write each other, which is a good thing. I have been meaning to send you a note, however, explaining the wire requesting your Plaza sketches—that having probably come as a surprise and an annoyance. Also expressing regret that you left town when you did. Harper’s is publishing, in the spring, a volume of my poetry, and you had hardly been out of town ten minutes when I wanted you back here to submit some sketches on New York subjects, to be used as little decorative illustrations of the poems which are on New York subjects. The jacket of the book, for instance, will be the lady at the fountain in the Plaza, the title of the book being: “The Lady Is Cold.” My reason for getting you to send me those sketches was that I wanted to show them to the artist who did the drawing. As things stand now, the book will contain three or four little spot drawings, in the wood-cut manner, but nothing of much consequence, because they were done by a high-powered artist who was not particularly interested in the task. I think if you had been here, with more leisure and sympathy, our collaboration might have been effective.
I appreciated your critical estimate and praise of my writing—a special kind of writing which has always amused me. I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace. As a reporter, I was a flop, because I always came back laden not with facts about the case, but with a mind full of the little difficulties and amusements I had encountered in my travels. Not till The New Yorker came along did I ever find any means of expressing those impertinences and irrelevancies. Thus yesterday, setting out to get a story on how police horses are trained, I ended by writing a story entitled “How Police Horses Are Trained” which never even mentions a police horse, but has to do entirely with my own absurd adventures at police headquarters. The rewards of such endeavor are not that I have acquired an audience or a following, as you suggest (fame of any kind being a Pyrrhic victory), but that sometimes in writing of myself—which is the only subject anyone knows intimately—I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under
my pressure, an antic sound.
I predict that a man of your digestion and parts will go far in the art of picture-making, and I suspect that it will eventually take some such form as the drawings and paintings by my friend Walter King Stone,1 which adorn Country Life and things like that, and which must give him much satisfaction in the making. One nice thing about either writing or drawing is that it is both a direct and an uncertain way of making a living. To write a piece and sell it to a magazine is as near a simple life as shining up a pushcart full of apples and vending them to passersby. It has a pleasing directness not found in the world of commerce and business, where every motion is by this time so far removed from the cause and the return, as to be almost beyond recognition.
Give my love to the chameleon that comes out from behind a vine on the porch of the Ponce de Leon,2 leers at you for a moment in the sunlight, and races back again.
Yours,
En
Needless to say, if you will mention a suitable address, I will perpetuate your New Yorker subscription, which is a mere gesture frequently made in order to hold my public, which I must keep at any cost.
To HAROLD ROSS
[Dorset, Ontario]
[July? 1929]
Friday
Dear Ross:
Report on me, as requested in your letter of uncertain date.
I am getting back to New York later than I expected due to the fact that I’m acquiring an interest in this camp [Camp Otter], and that takes time. My mild participation in the belles lettres of New York will probably be less this year than formerly (I’m working out a tentative schedule of 10 minutes a week for poesy, 25 minutes for prose, and a half hour before breakfast for answers to hard questions), a consummation designed to improve the state of the local b.l. as well as my own general condition. On account of the fact that The New Yorker has a tendency to make me morose and surly, the farther I stay away the better. I appreciate very much your extraordinary capacity to endure, and in fact cope with, my somewhat vengeful attitude about The New Yorker and my crafty habit of slipping away for long intervals (these intervals wouldn’t have cost you a cent if you hadn’t been a damn fanciful bookkeeper—this last one has cost you some $420, but if you insist on being ridiculous, it’s out of my control). Next to yourself and maybe one or two others, I probably have as tender a feeling for your magazine as anybody. For me it isn’t a complete life, though, and that’s one reason why returning to this place where I worked during the summers of 1920–21 has been such a satisfying experience. In ten years Dorset hasn’t changed—it’s almost the only place I’ve ever come back to that hasn’t given me an empty feeling from discovering that nothing can be the same again. The fellow that I first came here with [Robert Hubbard] is now running the camp, and we’re working on a plan for going in business together. At the moment I don’t know just what this amounts to, but it’s a lucky break for me because it’s a realization of an old desire of mine. Sometime next week I’m going to Ithaca via Fairport with the Hubbards. I don’t know exactly when I’ll be in New York.
