Letters of E. B. White
Page 30
Joe is well, and has been shorn. He has set out to complete his war stamp book and is in a financial mood, with overtones of shack-building. He seems to have plans to do some clamming with Lawrence, riding the crest of the 16¢ market. Your pullets set a new high yesterday, with 158. One Barred Rock went down and never got up, and two birds from the big house failed to survive a purge.
I haven’t been able to get my piece started, but will get after it soon. It’s very unfortunate that Bill Henderson waited until Harpertime to put in an appearance, as it is almost impossible for me to write and remodel at the same time.
Wish Joe and I could be with you all on Saturday and I hope you will take things easy and try to get a vacation and a rest while you’re away. Give Roger and Evelyn my very best and tell them how sorry I am to miss their wedding. I’m sure Evelyn will be the prettiest bride Pike’s Peak has ever looked down upon.
Lots of love to all from us both,
A
To STANLEY HART WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
26 December 1942
Dear Bun:
We had a nice Christmas. There was plenty of snow, and the first gift to be opened was 5 lbs of pigeon grain which Joe’s Uncle Art Illian had sent him, and the package had developed a lovely leak—so we had a fine covering of snow outdoors and a beautiful drift of grain in the living room. And Nancy’s puppy ate quite a good deal of both snow and grain, because of the excitement and all, and then had one of its pukin’ spells in K’s study under the piano. We spent Christmas morning at the spotting post watching for enemy planes but didn’t see any, and for dinner we had one of my young geese. The goose had disappeared last week during the cold snap (we had ten below zero for four days straight) and had spent several nights away from home. But we thawed him out and warmed him up and he tasted fine. Last night it began to snow again, and today we’ve got it for fair, with a NE wind piling it into drifts. We got your fine present, which Joe took care of right away. He decided to convert the stamp into four 25 centers and left it in an ashtray in the kitchen cabinet for safekeeping, where Nancy found it when she was putting out a cigarette on it. It is still in nice shape.
I haven’t figured out yet what Paul V. McNutt [Chairman, War Manpower Commission] wants to do with me in this war, but am going ahead farming and writing for the present. K and I have both taken back some of the New Yorker work which we chucked when we came here, because the staff has been so depleted and the magazine is very short handed and they keep pestering us to do the work! This is all right except the days aren’t long enough for everything. It takes practically a whole day, every day, to figure out how to get certain things done without using any gas.
I should think it would be fun teaching camouflage, but I will be glad when a ship can look like a ship again. Nancy’s husband got a commission the other day and is learning how to teach fliers high altitude physiology—so they will put their oxygen masks on without complaining. It’s a damned weird war, with you trying to make things invisible and me with a big signboard in my lane, signed by General Hugh Drum, warning me to stay off my own property.1 And my hens being waked at four A.M. when the electric light goes on, and violating the dim-out until breakfast time.
Well, it’s sundown and I have a date with a cow. You will never know what a cow is like until you have lived with one. . . .
Yrs,
Andy
To MILDRED B. WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
[January 1, 1943]
New Year’s Day
Dear Mil—
Our family seems to be starting the year 1943 on the spotting post in West Brooklin, where we scan the skies and catch up on correspondence. Even Joe is here with us today. We are letting him stay home from school because the road is iced up, and he decided he would become an observer for the day. The view from this post is grand—an arm of the sea called Eggemoggin Reach stretches out in front of us with a Northwest wind blowing the caps of the waves, and beyond the Reach are the white fields and dark woods of Deer Isle, and clear over in the west beyond Penobscot Bay are the Camden hills. The same wood stove which used to heat the scholars, when this was used as a schoolhouse, is burning cheerfully this morning, flinging its heat around in the same irresponsible way. Joe and I have just been conducting some experiments with a thermometer placed at different levels in the room, and have discovered that there is a difference of nineteen degrees between the temperature at one inch above the floor and the temperature at five feet above the floor. So that a man’s toes are nineteen degrees cooler than his nose. Then there is another drop of sixty-two degrees from schoolroom to backhouse seat, and a change in wind direction from NW to straight up.
We had a rough month of December with many storms, much cold, and lots of darkness, but Christmas was a good day and we all had a nice time of it. The woolen gloves you sent me are coming in handy already and you were a peach to give me such a good present. Did you knit them yourself? I ought to send you some yarn from my black sheep, sometime, so you could make Bill [White] a sweater like the one Joe has on today. It’s a wonderful garment—still smells like a sheep, and sheds rain like one. Tell Al I was going to send him some firewater for Christmas but never got my order off. I guess he’ll have to wait for his birthday instead. We all send greetings & hope that 1943 will bring good news and good health for all.
Lots of love,
Andy
• When the following was written, Katharine White was in Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York for surgery, brought on by a fall on the ice while in Maine. White’s sister Clara came to Maine to stay with young Joel so White could be with his wife in the city.
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
[February 25, 1943]
Thursday
Dear K:
The mild weather ended in the night, and it is cold and clear today—and beautiful. Clara is due to arrive in Bluehill this afternoon just before supper and Joe is staying there today to save gas.
Here’s a report on the rationing yesterday afternoon with Miss Ada Herrick and Mrs. Harding at the Corner School. They snipped all the coffee stamps out of Joe’s book, he being under coffee age and that being their instructions. (They did that with all children’s books, I made sure of that.) I declared 7 lbs. coffee and they took four tickets from my sugar book and three from yours, or vice versa; and I declared one can catsup and they took that from my new ration book Number 2. So I think everything is all in order.
Mrs. Gray and Howard and I went into a huddle about the smoked meat in the attic and decided that it had better be moved to the woodshed, so we did that. Howard says he keeps his meat in his garage right through the coldest weather. The attic was getting pretty warm in that mild spell.
Four hundred and thirty-seven persons had registered for Ration Book Number Two at the close of rationing yesterday afternoon. Owen Flye was still unaccounted for, but they were expecting him. That gives you a pretty close indication of the population of the town and how it has dwindled. A couple of years ago I think it was around seven hundred.
Mrs. Idella Love sent her greetings and sympathy to you and warned me that we would be approached shortly on the subject of the Red Cross (I believe it was). Miss Herrick also sent her best to you. She seems to be quite deaf.
Town meeting is Monday and I will be there to look after the interests of the Friend Memorial Public Library in your absence. The town report has arrived and you are featured as usual; I will send or bring it as soon as meeting is over. . . .
Joe is fine. He took over the little weak lamb yesterday and began pumping skim milk into it at frequent intervals. It was a beautiful little thing, lying in a carton on the kitchen shelf. I knew it would die but I didn’t tell him that and he nursed it with great care all afternoon and evening and then set his alarm clock for 2 A.M. so that he could give it a feeding. The clock failed to go off, but the lamb never knew the difference. It was dead this morning.
The house looks fine with its new paint job and waxed floors. I have been straightening things up as best I can. Min and Fred and Raffles are in excellent fettle and gave us a big welcome yesterday. If you were here, everything would be great.
I have all my work and all Howard’s to do.
Love,
Andy
To FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN
North Brooklin, Maine
13 March [1943]
Dear Fred:
For some months I have been trying to figure out what I had better do about my life, since it is apparent that I am trying to do too many things. I have talked this over with myself, back and forth, and am reluctantly reporting that I must quit “One Man’s Meat.” This must seem rather odd and sudden to you, but the truth is I have had great difficulty, all along, writing essays of this sort, as they do not seem to come naturally to me and I have to go through the devil to get them written. Several times I have sent off a department which did not satisfy me and which I sent only because it was to fulfill a promise, or continuing obligation, or whatever you call a monthly deadline. So the only thing for me to do is to quit.
I feel a peculiar disappointment, almost a defeat, in this, and hope Harper’s will feel mildly disappointed too. It ought to be the most congenial job in the world for me, and the fault is entirely mine if it isn’t. Certainly I have had nothing from Lee [Hartman] or from you but the nicest treatment in all matters.
If it is all right with you I would like the piece I turned in Thursday to be my last piece. But if you feel that I owe you more notice than this, I am willing to try to do one or two more. I haven’t figured out just what I will use for money from now on, and I trust I may occasionally be able to sell Harper’s something or other. For the present, I have farm work and editorial work enough to keep me busy if not solvent, and I am hoping that my health (which has been rather sketchy lately) will improve by my cutting out this regular chore.
I would have talked this over with you before leaving New York but I had not at that time arrived at a clear decision in my own mind, and there would have been no point in bothering you prematurely. It seemed wiser to break the news to myself before breaking it to you.
Sincerely,
Andy
P.S. If you contemplate running anything in the Personal column by way of explaining my absence, I’d appreciate the chance to see it before it gets into print.
To FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN
North Brooklin, Maine
20 March 1943
Dear Fred:
I’m very grateful for your letter and naturally I’m glad if my stuff has given satisfaction. My mind is made up, however, and although I may be doing a foolish thing, or taking a wrong turn, all anybody can do is follow his nose in these woods.
The desire is very strong in me to rid myself of any writing commitment. It is not simply that I want a vacation or a rest (although almost everyone would welcome such a pause in this period of history) but rather that I want to change my state of mind, and there is no other way to do it. I want to write when and if I feel like it. A department hanging over a man’s head is, as you say, very good discipline—but at the moment discipline is not the sort of medicine I need.
You mentioned in your letter that you wondered whether I might be sore, or miffed, about anything. There is nothing to this. If there were, I would tell you fast. (When I get annoyed, I grow loud and windy and put myself right down on paper.) I told you what I thought about the New Yorker piece, and its appearance at this time is the merest coincidence, so don’t give it a second thought.1
You asked for one more MEAT. I hate to say no and I hate to say yes. I feel incapable of writing one and am afraid that if I were to try, the result would be deplorable. I would much rather end up with the Central Park piece, which I think is up to snuff or better. I think Harper readers will prefer it to anything I could whip up in the next couple of weeks, so I hope you’ll think this over.
Again I want to say thanks for your letter and for the generous spirit of it. Running a column in your paper has been a lot of fun, not to say a privilege, and I’d like nothing better than to feel that I was able to go right on doing it. But I don’t, and I know that nothing can change that. My plans are nebulous. I may have to walk out on farming, too, unless I can find out what makes me feel so lifeless all the time. No punch any more. My doctor is feeding me strychnine, which is what I always thought they fed dogs when they didn’t want the dogs.
Sincerely,
Andy
To GUSTAVE S. LOBRANO
North Brooklin, Maine
[March? 1943]
Tuesday
Dear Gus:
Why don’t you come on down here for a few days of trouting and smelting? The ice is leaving the brooks and things are pretty nice here now. One of the boys in the elementary school caught an 111⁄2 inch trout day before yesterday on a fly that Joe tied, and what man has done man can do. . . .
My sow is pigging on the 28th, goslings are due to hatch next Monday, and the tides will shortly be coming right for bringing the smelt in after supper. We have had a lousy stretch of weather for the past fortnight, but I look for it to break. It is the eternal optimist in me. In spite of the weather I have managed to get my fields burnt off, lambs cut, chicks started, ration books renewed, cow sold, pigs engaged, hair cut, dog plucked, seedlings thinned, shed built, letters acknowledged, furniture recovered. As soon as I resigned from Harper’s, things began to move smoothly. There is apparently something about being a Harper [Magazine] author which unfits a man for routine accomplishment. It is like trying to tend the furnace in a dinner jacket. The woodcock are mating this week and you can see them sky-dancing above the pasture in the early part of the evening. Joe has been able to get within ten feet of one. The male always alights on the same spot from which he took off, and by creeping toward the place during his dance you can get very close. You better visit us before they start rationing travel, which is in the cards, I am told.
My year’s supply of wood (12 cord) was sawed yesterday by a Model T engine. Such vigor and stamina as you never saw.
Lots of love from us all,
Andy
To HAROLD ROSS
N. Brooklin, Maine
12 April [1943?]
Dear Mr. Ross:
. . .I am at work on a comment on the curious relationship between General Douglas MacArthur and screen star Dorothy Lamour. I just found out yesterday that General MacArthur’s first wife’s daughter was Miss Lamour’s second husband’s first wife, or I would have acted sooner.
Yrs sincerely,
White
To HAROLD ROSS
[North Brooklin, Maine]
[April? 1943]
Monday
Dear Mr R
It seems to me time I answered your letters—I would have done so sooner only have been under certain pressures of a local nature, here. I quit the Harper job for no particular reason, other than what seemed to me an inability to write any more pieces of that nature and that length. Feeling the way I did about the matter, I thought it better to drop out. I never did like the long dreary Harper interval of two months between conception and parturition—although at that it’s shorter than a hog, which is 114 days.
As for writing for the NYer, I certainly aim to. But I see no reason for changing the present understanding, which is that I should turn in some comment each week and get paid for what is accepted. You spoke of my becoming the “principal contributor,” but I would think that the principal contributor should be the one who turns in the most acceptable stuff, whether it happens to be me or somebody else. I can give more time to writing comment now, but I don’t want to make any weekly income arrangement. Such an arrangement is sensible if a person is doing the whole department, and accepts that as his weekly responsibility, as I used to; but now that I’m on a piecework basis, I should like to continue getting paid for exactly what I do. You asked if I wanted to agree to do a certain minimum number of words weekly for
a certain minimum number of weeks. I don’t want to sign myself up for a specified amount of comment as long as I am living 500 miles from first base, because it is too difficult, sometimes, to turn out anything at all, much less a specified amount. In New York I could always dig up a department, by looking around in an old folder or a new barroom, but here the situation is different.
I ought to be able to do a little better on comment from now on because, for one thing, I have just convinced the gas ration board that I should receive enough gas so that I can make one trip a week to the Bluehill post office, to mail my stuff. Hitherto, I have had to catch the mailtruck that passes our door early in the afternoon on the same day that I receive the comment stuff from your office (Wednesday). Gave me very little time to turn around.
Am very much obliged for your kind offers but think there is no point in trying to apply a lot of mystical arithmetic to my simple job, as though we were a couple of actuaries. Hell, I was delighted to learn that you still felt you could make a commentator out of me. I have no illusions, though, about what I can do now that I’m somewhat out of touch. If I should ever return to living in town for all, or at least more, of the year, I might easily want to renew, or increase, my NYer work if you were of that mind. Right now, I simply want to do as much as possible on a straight contributing basis, no guarantees and no bonuses.
White
To HAROLD ROSS
North Brooklin, Maine
3 May 1943
Dear Mr. Ross:
Thanks for your letter. I regard N&C highly, and the New Yorker seems to be the only magazine I maintain any relationship with, of a passionate nature. [DeWitt] Wallace has been sort of fidgeting around, but I guess it’s just a literary correspondence, like the last time. He keeps mentioning Woollcott’s name and a hush falls over the typewritten page. Last week he sent me a great thick hunk of dough and a small proofsheet of a Harper’s paragraph he said he had scheduled for his next issue, but I found where his digestive staff had lopped off one of my sentences and frigged around in their curious manner, so I sent everything back and said that unlike a vanilla bean I did not wish to be extracted. Hell, some day I may toss off a really good sentence or two, and wouldn’t want a hair of its head touched. The truth about the [Reader’s] Digest is that they approach every manuscript with the hope of gaining a line of type before reaching the middle of the third sentence. That is no way to approach a manuscript.