Letters of E. B. White
Page 16
A little later, standing on a street corner in Lexington Avenue and reading the President’s inaugural address, I got the sort of lift that I guess our ancestors occasionally felt in great moments during the early days of the country—the love-of-fatherland, which ordinarily we take pains to keep ourselves intellectually independent of. It was a great day and I won’t forget it.
. . .Kay and I are seriously thinking of taking to the land: we cut out farm ads. Also we think often of your antique invitation to visit you. I can imagine your curious feelings if we ever showed up; for we now occupy in your minds the comfortable berth accorded those who have proved, through the years, that They Never Come. I do want to go fishing, though, and maybe I could work that. How about naming a day and hour and telling me to be there, in my reefer and cap? I am knitting a tiny creel.
Andy
To CLARENCE DAY
25 West 45th Street
New York
[January 4, 1934]
Thurs
Dear Clarence:
. . .I called up the NY Times on Tuesday morning, when I received your letter, and said I wanted to insert a Public Notice. “How does it go?” the clerk asked. “It goes,” I replied, “‘E. B. White sends New Year’s greetings to Clarence Day exactly.’” Well, the clerk said, you will have to come into the office, we can’t take that over the telephone. Come in and see either Mr. McNamara or Mr. Kaufman. This sounded like a challenge, so I went around to the Times office and gained an audience with Mr. McNamara. I showed him the typewritten copy. “E. B. White sends New Year’s greetings to Clarence Day exactly.” He studied it a long time. “What does it mean?” he asked finally. “Means what it says,” I snapped. “It’s kind of a greeting.” “Well,” he said, “we can’t run that as a Public Notice; it might mean something.” Then he got up and took the matter up with Mr. Kaufman. I saw Mr. Kaufman study the slip of paper for a long time, then shake his head. Mr. McNamara came back. “What does this mean here—Clarence Day exactly? What do you mean ‘exactly’?” “I put that in,” I explained, “to prevent a great many inconsiderable and nosey people, in whom I haven’t the slightest charitable interest, from horning in on the New Year’s wishes I am sending my good friend Mr. Day.” Mr. McNamara gazed at me in alarm. “However,” I went on, “if you object to the word ‘exactly’ I will take it out. Just make it read: ‘E. B. White sends New Year’s greetings to Clarence Day.’” Again Mr. McNamara studied the notice, in a kind of reverie. He shook his head. “You mean,” I asked, “that the Times won’t accept my greetings?” “We can’t,” he said. “It might mean something.” “Really,” I said, “the Times is magnificent!” I rose, shook hands and departed. Happy new year anyway!
Andy
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
[Camden, South Carolina]
[January 1934]
Tues afternoon, 2 o’clock
Dear Kay:
About ten minutes after I wrote you, the sun broke through the fog, and now it is warm and clear with a west wind. I will not change my plans, however; but will go up to Washington tomorrow night.
It is like old times to see the sun, for without bright hard light and deep shadow the forms and colors of the south lack their authentic laziness. . . . I have just outwitted the management by lunching in my room, on beer and cheese, while finishing a “statement” for the Cornell Sun. I am out of favor with everybody at the Inn except the bellboys, who respect me for the many bottles of beer I order, each with its 10 cent tip. I walked about ten miles this morning (I have been knocking off ten to twenty miles a day regularly, and my calves are as stiff as an old paint brush). It is sweet and sad in my room now, overlooking the garden; I wish you could be here, you would love it with the sun out. My terrier (who seems to reside across the road) has just sneaked out with a dead sparrow. How changeless our lives really are: after several days the sun appears and I have written a poem—and I now recall that when I was here at the age of ten, staying at a private home (the inn being full) we had three grey days, then the sun appeared, and I obliged with a poem which started: “Oh beautiful sun . . .” Much love to you and to Joey—
Andy
To CLARENCE DAY
25 West 45th Street
[March 1934]
Friday
Dear Clarence:
Among the books chosen by the Syracuse Public Library for its shelf marked “Devotional Reading for Lent” is your fine work “God and My Father.”
I am noting it in my fine department “Notes & Comment.”
Yr fine friend,
E. B. White
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
The Vineta
Palm Beach, Florida
[March 31, 1934]
Peter Henderson in Florida
From this fat garden, with its slow noon beat,
Its steady shadow and its clinging heat;
From careful palm, from white & blinding wall,
From sleepless lizard & the hot vine’s scrawl,
From tropic luxury and southern sweetness
My senses turn (seeking their stern completeness)
To you, my love, & to our northern spring—
Crosby’s Egyptian, and the Golden King!
Suggested name for largest
tomato in the world—
M. Ridiculosa
• The water in the Whites’ newly acquired house in North Brooklin came from a well by the barn and was unfit to drink. A “boiling spring” in the woods across the road seemed promising, and White drove to Maine to start work on a new water system, stopping overnight in Boston at 87 Myrtle Street on Beacon Hill, where his wife’s sister Rosamond and her husband, John S. Newberry, had a house. The spring was dug out to a depth of six feet, rocked up, curbed, and piped into the house—330 feet distant. It proved to be an unfailing source of water.
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
[North Brooklin, Maine]
[May 19, 1934]
Saturday night
Borough Hall
Dearest Kay:
A long and lovely day. I sneaked out of 87 Myrtle a little after 6 o’clock, arousing no one. Ros was in Northampton, nurses were just going to work in the Massachusetts General, white shoes and stockings under dark coats. Newburyport was interesting—the shoe factory by the bridge had burned down and the whole town had been up all night. Stopped in Portland & went into the clay tile situation. Decided against them. Tile the size we would need would be too heavy to handle & too expensive. Even the company admitted it. Called at the State House in Augusta but the boys had knocked off. Studied a stuffed moose instead. Very nice. I threw back the Plymouth’s top in Augusta and the rest of the ride was sunswept and grand. Pastures were white with spring flowers, and everywhere there was something doing. Took the dirt road to Bluehill—it’s perfectly good and much the pleasanter way to arrive. Decided to fix up spring independent of Augusta. In Bluehill (which I reached at about 4 p.m.) I galvanized into action & set wheels going. Mr. Stanley [plumber] promises to get, on Monday, wash bowl ($16.00), toilet ($25.00), & copper pipe (?); Tuesday to install bowl and toilet. Mr. Brooks Westcott [mason] promises to be on hand Monday morning to start operations on the spring.
When I reached home Howard1 presented me with the State Report. It shows “small amount of dangerous bacteria” and “practically no pollution from sewage or other source.” This ambiguous official opinion of our spring did not discourage me. Mr. Westcott, who is one swell guy and who incidentally has been saving old brick for us, came over to call & look the spring over (with Mrs. Westcott) this evening; I showed him the report and showed him the spring & he thinks we are perfectly justified in going ahead. Says the spring looks to him as though it would test all right when it gets cleaned up.
Howard took me on a tour of the estate to show me how hard he had been working. The borders are well groomed, yellow tulips are out, seedlings are showing in the hot frames, bean poles are in place, strawberries are in, & all the vegetables are planted. Two heif
ers are in the pasture & three more are to come. A Mr. Young wants to buy the hay. Our taxes have gone up. John Allen [a neighbor] has got back his old yachting job, & leaves Tuesday for New York much to his delight. He was to have helped dig the trench for our copper pipe; but is polishing up his own buttons instead. Haven’t seen Percy [Moore] or any of our friends yet. No activity on dock. Lawn has been rolled, our man says.
Am too sleepy to write more. The clock is going, & the peepers. Wish you were here. The house seems lonely.
Love to you and Joe,
Andy
To GUSTAVE S. LOBRANO
25 W. 45th Street
[October? 1934]
Friday
Dear Gus:
I’m sending you under sep cov a copy of “Every Day Is Saturday,” a sort of a book. I don’t think a great deal of it, but there is an inescapable finality about a book: it represents something done, something finished, a coming-to-a-head of life. And so I’m sending you a copy even though I don’t think a great deal of it.
It is almost impossible to write anything decent using the editorial “we,” unless you are the Dionne family. Anonymity, plus the “we,” gives a writer a cloak of dishonesty, and he finds himself going around, like a masked reveler at a ball, kissing all the pretty girls.
Andy
To ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT
25 West 45th Street
November [1934?]
Dear Friend and Reader:
Thanks for the ad over the wireless. I have a spaniel that defrocked a nun last week. He took hold of the cord. I had hold of the leash. It was like elephants holding tails.
Imagine me undressing a nun, even second hand.
Yrs,
E. B. White
To CLARENCE DAY
16 East Eighth Street
New York
[November 18, 1934]
Sunday
Dear Clarence:
In that book on advertising which you are going to write, I hope you will do something about the way advertising people are forever trying to identify themselves with the arts. . . .
I have a theory that a great deal of advertising is attributable not to a merchant’s ambition for his product but to a copywriter’s dream of participation in the world of letters. Self-expression is at the bottom of a lot of stuff which masquerades as industrial promotion.
The fever of creation was strong in the blood of the copywriters I knew at Frank Seaman’s agency in the days of my young madness (my cellophane phase). One of them was forever telling me how he would spring out of bed at two o’clock in the morning, with an inspiration for a window shade campaign (waterproof and washable). A moment of sheer genius in the middle of the night.
Yours,
Andy
To HAROLD ROSS
[January? 1935]
[Interoffice memo]
Mr. Ross:
You can have the “Department of Correction” for exclusive use if you want, as I am generous that way. But I don’t think that it is the right head for the job—not as good as We Stand Corrected. Department of Correction suggests corrective methods applied to others, not self-correction. Maybe unimportant.
Always happy to do a service to the magazine.
EBW
• In the spring of 1935, White bought a cruising boat, the thirty-foot double-ended cutter Astrid. H. K. (Bun) Rigg was a yacht broker who also wrote a column on yachting for The New Yorker. The friendship between Rigg and White ripened when Rigg, together with Edward (Ned) Smith, a friend of Rigg’s, helped White sail Astrid home to Brooklin. Rigg later became editor of Skipper Magazine.
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
New York Yacht Club
Station No. 6
Newport, Rhode Island
[June 9, 1935]
Sunday A.M.
Dearest Kay:
Rain, wind, and rain. In spite of five days of adverse conditions, we are right on schedule. Ned and I brought Astrid to Newport yesterday and Bun joined us again. He is writing his column now, and I am considering getting a shave—my beard not having been touched since Tuesday morning. It is long and soft and beautiful. Some of the hairs came in white. I cut my moustache off in Saybrook while waiting for the fog to lift, and am much more comfortable, as the growth was a great collector of odd bits of food, flotsam, etc. Lay right alongside Alastor1 in New London, and thought of the many good times we had aboard her. She looked shabby.
Astrid is a constant delight; everywhere people speak praises of her, and want to examine her. The first day out was a terror—blowing 25 miles NE, dead ahead. We never set a sail, but motored to Southport, pitching right into it—so rough you couldn’t stand up on deck. We passed a schooner under power, overhauling her and leaving her behind as though she were standing still—which she pretty near was. Visited the Scudders in Southport, and next day made Saybrook after dark, against light head winds & foul tide. Fog blew in during the night, and next day we didn’t start till about noon, when it seemed to be clearing. Just as we started to enter Fisher’s Island Sound, the fog shut down thick, so we put into New London. Bun is a first rate sailor—careful, exact, and conservative. He takes it very seriously and is on the job every minute. Getting into New London was no cinch, and he hit it right on the nose. I’m learning plenty on this cruise—for one thing the importance of always knowing exactly where you are. The stove works great, and we’ve had good grub & lots of sleep.
Did you see the item about the steamer “Castine,” out of Belfast, hitting a rock and dumping a bunch of excursionists into the water? Cheery.
There’s a Friendship in the harbor here, bound for Maine. We’ll probably shove off together and keep each other company, which will be fun. Right now we’re hung up, waiting for the weather to turn around. It can’t stay against us forever, and we certainly deserve a break. I miss you and Joe a lot and wish you could be along. Much love to you both.
Andy
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
Wed.—Gloucester [Massachusetts]
[June 12, 1935]
[Postcard]
Dear Kay—
The wind finally turned around, & we ran yesterday from Newport to the western entrance of the Canal, before a fresh SW breeze. Dinghy took a sea aboard off Sakonnet & swamped. We never even saw it go. Today was beautiful—light airs, calm sea. Bucked tide through the Canal, & passed our old friend Taormina,1 of Buck’s Harbor. Remember her? Astrid is simply marvelous. We crossed Mass. Bay this P.M. out of sight of land most of way, & hit Gloucester right on the nose.
Much love,
A
• Gus Lobrano, whose tastes ran more to the literary life than to the business world, left the family travel business in 1935 and took a job at Town and Country magazine, where he worked for Joseph Bryan III. He spent most of that summer in the Whites’ New York apartment, commuting to Albany on weekends to see his family.
To GUSTAVE S. LOBRANO
North Brooklin [Maine]
July 15, 1935
Dear Gus:
We snatch eagerly for the paper each day to read the news of the hot wave. It is revitalizing just to know that you are all suffering terribly in town. I have just painted a pair of oars (French gray) and the existence of New York seems questionable. The tides run in and out, clams blow tiny jets of seawater up through the mud, a white line of fog hangs around the outer islands, days tumble along in cool blue succession, and I hate the word September. In Astrid I went deep-sea fishing last week—the first time I had ever done it. We started at six for the three-hour run down the bay and out to the fishing grounds. Thick fog over the sea, and a long slow groundswell, the world blotted out. The fish come in with stupid rapidity—great lumps of things, mostly cod and haddock. The line is as big around as a lampcord. The bait is clams, which soon smell handsomely on the decks. The sheer poundage is fascinating. We filled three washboilers with fish in a morning—well over three hundred pounds. One of the men with us, a housemaster at Lawrenceville, was violently sick—a
desolate green morning for him, adding his stench to the clambait. I had a thoroughly good time; but it is the farthest cry from brook trout, with your clean riffle and delicate equipment. I was glad to get a report from 16 E 8, and I send my love to Josephine and all the slipcovers and plants. Did the bat ever show up? Roger really left one there, accidentally. He always has some hideous animal half under control.