Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  Or maybe we’re just jealous.

  . . .I have made an unholy mess out of this “year off” business. I haven’t produced two cents worth of work, have broken my wife’s health, my own spirit, and two or three fine old lampshades by getting my feet tangled in the cord. Kay is restless when I go away, and I am no bargain when I am around, either. Gibbs quit his desk job rather abruptly, and Kay has had a lot of extra work deriving from that. She got grippe before Christmas, and I got it, and we celebrated the 23rd of December by fighting over what Xmas was all about anyway. This left us in a limp beaten state—one of those periods from which one can’t escape by merely taking a boat and watching somebody balance a 20-gallon water jar on her head. We’re going to have to balance our own jars for a while. I took Joe to Maine last week for his holidays, and stayed in the white, peaceful village of Bluehill, listening to the beat of tire chains against cold mudguards, studying tracks where the deer had pawed the snow under the little apple trees, sliding down hill, and ushering in the new year by going to bed and letting the Baptist church ring twelve clear holy strokes for me. It was a fine trip and we had real winter weather, almost Currier and Ives in its purity. The woods, after a snowstorm, were lovelier than any cathedral, and we went in on a bobsled with some men, and helped jig out some firewood. It was birch. The horse had a bell on.

  . . .The lease on this house expires on October 1, and one of the things that is getting us down is trying to decide whether we will renew it (in which case I would have to go back writing my weekly sermon for the NYer) or whether we will chuck the city and go live in Maine maybe. Problems like that, which are easy to solve if you do them quick, or if you have no children, become increasingly intricate and demoralizing if you take to brooding on them and if you have to fit schools and so forth into the picture.

  Can’t give you much general news of this town, as I don’t get around much except to my neighborhood movie to see Dorothy Lamour in “Jungle Princess” which is my favorite picture. . . . Romeyn Berry is back upstate, having been given the sack.1 Gibbs is commenting. The two happiest people in America are Benchley and Franklin Roosevelt. Benchley’s high spirits are those of a retired reformer, who got all his good deeds behind him safely in his twenties. Between 20 and 30 Benchley was worrying about international peace, and fathering two sons. I suppose he still dreams of those days, once in a while. . . . Roosevelt is happy because it has never occurred to him that he really doesn’t understand what’s wrong with things any more than anybody else does. He is in gales of laughter most of the time. I saw a picture of him going into a church of the living Christ in Washington the other day. He was in stitches. He is happier than Benchley, even; happier than my dachshund who has a new rubber ball. Maybe I could write a piece called “What’s So Funny?”, in which I ask the president what the hell he is grinning about. But the likelihood is I won’t. One of the saddest people of our generation died the other day, Don Marquis. What a kick in the pants life gave that guy! I picked up “The Almost Perfect State” the other day and ran across a passage about what he hoped his old age would be like:

  Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and write ribald songs against society; strapped to one arm of our chair will be a forty-five calibre revolver, and we shall shoot out the lights when we want to go to sleep. . . . We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age.

  What actually happened was, he lost his wife and child, wrote one successful play and two unsuccessful ones, had a stroke, lost his money, lost his second wife, had a couple of other strokes, and finally ended up in Kew Gardens or some damn place living with a sister, and even his old friends hated to go see him because it was too embarrassing all round. He wasn’t vigorous, or disreputable. There was no shooting out of lights. I guess his sister used to turn them out. He wasn’t disorderly, he wasn’t even unhonoured—he had more honorary pallbearers than you could shake a bottle of embalming fluid at. Ah, welladay.

  You will be pleased to hear that my rubber plant is, in the face of all these things, putting out a new leaf.

  Love to Helen, Smessborg, and yourself, from Kay, Joel, Freddie, and yr friend

  Andy

  P.S. “Memoirs of a Master” is all written, and all rejected—by the Sat Eve Post. I have retired it, along with an empty fish tank, an old can of ski wax, a picture of my grade school graduating class, and a box of unopened carbon paper.

  The reason people don’t write you oftener, and by “people” I mean me, is you never put your correct mailing address on your letters. This last letter says “Naples, December 22,” and contains a tear-jerking paragraph about the American Express, Rome. I am not going to take time to write a full-bodied five-page letter and send it to James Thurber, No Benzina, Italy; or James Thurber, care of Lady Into Fox, England. And this means I will have to put in a phone call to Miss Terry, to find out whether you are Guaranty Trust or American Express, London or Paris. It’s easy for you to remember this, because you are, in a sense, living it. But my life is a different story. The prospect of calling up Miss Terry is almost enough to keep me from ever starting a letter. Why can’t European travelers learn that every letter should contain in addition to the dateline, a line called “Correct Mailing Address”?

  I forgot to tell you that my “Memoirs” were rejected by a man named Joseph Bryan III—a coincidence which has done as much as anything to destroy me.

  A

  • Early in 1938 Katharine’s father, Charles Sergeant, then in his eighties, had fallen ill while in Daytona, Florida. Katharine had gone south to attend him in what was to be his last illness. He died shortly after her return north and was buried in Hibernia, Florida, in the tiny graveyard on the plantation where he had spent many winters. His death, and the chore of settling his affairs, left Katharine tired and depressed, and she and White took off for a Bermuda holiday, where they stayed at “Waterville,” a guesthouse run by Ada Trimingham. The Whites had been at Waterville once before—in 1930, shortly after their marriage.

  To GUSTAVE S. LOBRANO

  Waterville

  Paget East [Bermuda]

  [March 1938]

  Thursday night

  Dear Gus:

  The wine dark sea was darker than usual, and pretty gruelling. My stomach held together, but there was a great deal of large scale misery, one broken hip, one smashed face, and several minor abrasions. Kay narrowly missed getting mashed when a writing desk which she had just vacated got wiped out by a heavy leather armchair which went adrift in the public room. We got in hours late and lay at anchor all one extra night outside the channel off St. George’s, waiting for daylight. However, here we are. My bicycle is a Raleigh (#187). It is the finest wheel I have ever pushed and gives me the highest satisfaction. The pace of a bike has an almost instant salutary effect on the system—it’s a wonder Roosevelt hasn’t thought of it in connection with the better life.

  Because of the day’s delay at sea, our arrival at Trimingham’s had, for the other guests, that over-ripe taint which befouls the much-touted guest who simply fails to show up when he is due. Ada had been advertising us for days, and had prepared, for the rare occasion of our First Meal, a roasted turkey with a red rose under its wing. It was eaten by the others, doggedly and in silence. The strain is still apparent. We retire to our room rather early after coffee, leaving the living room free for the bridge players—among them the Pratts from Des Moines, who won a trip to Bermuda in the raffle held at the Junior League ball in Des Moines last November, a bit of good fortune which not even Mr. Pratt’s stomach ulcer could stand in the way of fulfilling. Their journey was not without its hazards, however, as it w
as stipulated that the Eastern Air Line was to waft them on the first leg of this unexpected and ulcerous adventure. Mr. P. still eats nothing but custards and other bland substances. Mrs. P. is excessively gay and open about the ulcer, and drags it into the conversation at all possible moments. Both are keen to talk about Phil Stong. We have, also in our midst, a Miss Dickerman (on the elderly side), who fractured her hip day before yesterday because she thought she could ride through a soft spot (and couldn’t). She sells group insurance, and although in obvious pain, was anxious to find out directly how many people the New Yorker employed. She gets around with a cane, and is rubbed frequently by a native rubber. Also a lady golf champion, and mother; and the young couple from Scarsdale; and the unmarried horticulturalist who likes to strip at the beach and take the sun in good earnest. And, of course, others.

  We’ve already had some good swimming and lying about, and are getting used again to the open and shut Bermuda sky—first bright sun, then a five minute shower of rain. The tennis begins on Saturday. Haven’t been on the railroad yet but are planning a trip to St. David’s. Ada says it was hatred of the railroad that killed Fred [Trimingham]. In memory of him she has never ridden on it, and never will.

  I think Bermuda is suffering some from its high pressure sales promotion—they asked for punishment in full page color ads and now they are beginning to get it. But the essential quality of the place is not much changed, and Kay and I are tickled to be here.

  My typing is keeping the lady golfer from her sleep, and will affect her score tomorrow, so I better quit. I’ll post this air mail, so it will be flown to you at terrific risk of life and limb. (It does seem odd that people should fly here at 250 m.p.h. in order to be able to ride a bicycle.)

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To JAMES THURBER

  245 E 48

  Apreel 16 [1938?]

  Dear Jim:

  Before you move out of that Maritime Alp nest of yours maybe I can get in one more letter—making probably two in all. There are a few matters which I want you should know about, including the snatch of conversation which I overheard between two men on the street the other day. Just as I was passing, I heard one man say to the other: “So she had the whole fucking bedroom suite sawed up and put together again.” Then there is the matter of the sound effect record which I found in the catalogue of a concern which makes sound effect records. It is a record of a piano being smashed by a man with an ax. I think it costs two dollars, and it seems to me the sort of thing that you ought to have in your home, for rainy days when the mood is on you. I keep thinking quite a lot about this record, and about how much water had to flow over the dam in America before this country was ready for it—first the Pilgrims, with a dead fish in every hill of corn, then the long winter at Valley Forge, then Emerson and the exaltation of those transcendental days when the Peabodys and the Hawthornes and the Hales were founding a pure blood-strain that finally produced Katharine, then bloody Shiloh, and the blizzard of 1888, and the wonderful vital Bull Moose era when you were running your electric backwards to unwind the speedometer and I was playing cops and robbers and wondering why I couldn’t pee except when I was alone, then Verdun, and a brave new streamlined airconditioned world crumbling from its own strange malefactions. The recorded sound of a piano being demolished by an ax is the disc we have all been awaiting: the Ultimate Sound, perhaps. The Instrument of the Immortals, getting it in the teeth from a Keen Kutter. . . .

  Last weekend we went to Maine to see a man about putting in a furnace. The man arrived by seaplane from Boston. We took everything out of the closets so the workmen could get at the chimneys. Then the blizzard came, and the thermometer dropped to 16, and the waterpipes froze a little bit—just enough so you had to crawl under the porch in the early morning and warm them up with a blowtorch. We sold more than a hundred dollars worth of beds and chairs and tables to one woman over the week-end. Women are suckers for beds, chairs, and tables. I don’t know what the hell they do with them. I have made a careful count, and I find that Katharine and I (up until I began to take the situation in hand) owned 21 beds. That’s too many beds, Jim. Every one had a spring, a mattress, two sheets, two double or four single blankets, a bedspread, and a comforter. I decided that if we went on accumulating beds, I would end up in the same sort of snarl that Richard Whitney got into. He was just trying to work his way clear of a lot of beds and mirrors and occasional pieces, and now he’s in Sing Sing with the other prisoners tipping their caps to him and calling him “Mr. Whitney” respectfully.

  Everybody is looking forward to the return of you and Helen. Stage Magazine has folded in anticipation of your arrival, and Hanrahan’s stock reverts (we hope) to the N Yorker.1 Ross is hard at work, and I have written a fine parody of Life’s “The Birth of a Baby,” with Irvin illustrations.2 Gibbs and McKelway are living temperate, clean lives, and Morris Ernst is around defending civil liberties. I have a certain amount of ear trouble, which may be frostbite, but which might just be a touch of mastoid. Nancy has had a job offered her teaching science in the Buffalo Seminary, the Japanese took quite a beating with a loss of 20,000 and Turtle Bay is full of daffodils, English daisies, blooming gallantly among last winter’s dachshund turds. I have never known how to spell turd, whether it is turd, or tird. Do you?

  . . .I’m planning to move to Maine in the early part of June, taking Joe. Kay will follow shortly, after seeing Nancy graduate from Bryn Mawr and Roger from Pomfret. Terror-struck after a year of not doing anything in the way of earning money to support 21 beds, I have submitted two clipbooks to Harper. One is “The Fox of Peapack,” a bunch of ballads, etc. The other is “Quo Vadimus?,” a bunch of casuals. I also have a children’s book about half done, so I guess I am going into the authoring game again. Do you approve of “Quo Vadimus?” as a title, or should I think of another? If you and Helen want a bed, let me know.

  Love,

  Andy

  McNulty is out of the magazine, which is just as well, as the magazine was not up to him. I knew all along the magazine wasn’t up to him.

  To KATHARINE S. WHITE

  Mrs. Woodward’s Boarding House

  Bluehill, Maine

  April 27, 1938

  Wednesday night

  Dear Kay—

  Santayana, whom I read on the train last night, holds out little hope for our achieving any satisfactory relationship with the Maine people. And the school teachers at supper tonight, when they heard about Joe, stared at me as though I were some kind of madman. I got a cold welcome this trip—Alice Moore turned me down because she was housecleaning, & Mrs. Thurman Gray vetoed me for some reason which I couldn’t quite understand over the phone. I began to feel like Joseph and Mary: it would be a joke on the community if I should be delivered of a Messiah tonight, right in this unheated bedroom. Mrs. Woodward (spelling?) has a club foot, & does her own cooking. She used to teach the North Brooklin school, years ago. The district nurse, who sat on my right, invited me to a meeting of the League of Women Voters in Miss Pearson’s barn & got me as far as the kitchen door, when I backed out. There was a potter at dinner, too, in a cobalt blue jacket & lemon yellow scarf. Mr. Wilder,1 passing through town in his sedan, bowed pleasantly.

  Our pasture was burned yesterday, & got a good burn. Good progress has been made on the house. The new foundation wall has been built for the conservatory, so I guess there’s nothing to do but go ahead. . . . Our driveway is a mountain of large rocks. Kitchen chimney gone entirely. Hot water boiler gone. Piano gone. Forsythia out in bantam yard, & it was sunny & springlike today, but with a wind springing up. Howard reports there is no work in town & that Bluehill is dead & is expecting the worst season yet. However, there seemed to be plenty of labor being employed in my yard, & after counting the men I got panicky & rushed to my typewriter & wrote a comment toward defraying the day’s damage. This is the only sheet of paper I have, & Fred Kneisel,2 when he vacated this room, left none: so I will have to quit. Ear is better. Lots of lo
ve.

  Andy

  To HAROLD ROSS

  [Blue Hill, Maine]

  [May? 1938]

  Dear Mr. Ross:

  Would stand ready to go back on newsbreaks the first of June, if this meets with your pleasure. I would like to know what quantity of breaks you would be interested in getting, and what you pay. This is important to me although I can see where it might be just a detail in your busy life, otherwise you would have opened up before this and given me the Answer Direct.

  My breaks are raised right in the home from hardy vigorous stock, and are guaranteed free from white diarrhoea (pullorum disease). Many of the little “headings” have a long life-span and are used over and over and over again, but I make no extra charge. It’s all included in the original price.

  White

  To GLUYAS WILLIAMS

  245 East 48

  9 June 1938

  Dear Gluyas:

  We were delighted to hear that you would be going to Deer Isle after all.1 The almost total demolition of our nice white house has pretty well taken the starch out of us, but we will soon be in residence among the ruins, and maybe we can make something of it all. Here in town we are desperately trying to wind up our affairs, dwelling in the sad residue of overstuffed furniture and underdone memories—bare floors, half empty shelves, untouched closets whose doors we dare not open. The paraphernalia of life are really appalling, when you start stirring them up. Kay left for Pomfret this morning to attend Roger’s graduation; Nancy finished at Bryn Mawr last week. Joe staged his own celebration with a fever of 103, scaring the daylights out of us, but quickly subsided. In the general turbulence I find I am unable to get any work done of any sort, and spend my time trying to decide whether or not to throw away my biology notebook (Mount Vernon High School), examining the dog for fleas, and running errands. However, the steady disappearance of beds, chairs, mirrors, rugs, drapes, glass, china, and oddments is clearing my blood; we’ve been holding private sales with considerable success (our prices are right) and in another ten days I hope to be without a pencil to my name, except what’s in North Brooklin.