Letters of E. B. White
Page 31
(The way to approach a manuscript is on all fours, in utter amazement.)
White
To H. K. RIGG
North Brooklin, Maine
June 4, 1943
Dear Bun:
K and I got a big wallop out of hearing from you, and we had you placed on the wrong hemisphere, for one thing. I am still farming it and guess I will be for the duration, although we plan to spend next winter in New York catching up on sleep and drinks. Joe just graduated from grammar school and will probably be going off to boarding school in the fall if we can comb the sheep-shit out of his hair and get him into some clean clothes. This has been quite a year for us. K fell on the ice in February, just as we were leaving for a week in the city, and when we got there she had to be rushed to the hospital for a major operation. She’s all right now but it was hell while it lasted. Came right in lambing time, too. The winter hung on long past its time and when spring finally came the rains came with it and we had nothing but rain, with the garden plots under six inches of water. However, I produced 14 lambs, 5 pigs, and 272 chicks and 5 goslings in spite of the weather and they are all doing well. A neighbor of mine had a sow which had 21 pigs, an almost unheard of number. I was over there when she started in having them, about eight in the evening, and I hung around till she’d had half a dozen, then I went home to bed and next morning I went back and she was still discharging pigs. Four of them were born dead and when I asked the owner what had caused that, he said: “I dunno, but there was an awful lot goin’ on all around ’em and they probly died from the excitement.” . . . K and Joe send their best.
Andy
To FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN
North Brooklin, Maine
2 July 1943
Dear Fred:
Thanks ever so much for sending me the letters. That crack about [Louis] Bromfield being a real farmer roused my sporting blood and I will gladly take him on at any time, he to choose the weapons—anything from dung forks to post-hole diggers or 2-ounce syringes for worming sheep.
I read about Gene’s [Saxton’s] death in the Times, two or three days late, and it was an awful shock although I knew he was in poor health. I was very fond of him and will miss him like the devil. It does seem strange that he and Lee [Hartman], who were so close, should wind up their affairs within such a short space of time.
Sincerely,
Andy
To CASS CANFIELD
North Brooklin, Maine
13 August 1943
Dear Mr. Canfield:
Thanks very much for your letter.
I would like to discuss my publishing life with you some time, as there are some things on my mind. There is no rush about it, however, as I have no book ready to go.
One thing I’d like your opinion on is whether you think a new edition of “One Man’s Meat,” which would include some of the later pieces that came out after the book did, would be a sensible idea. I don’t know what I think about it, but it occurred to me—or rather, it occurred to my wife, who is the person in this family to whom things occur.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To HAROLD ROSS
North Brooklin, Maine
22 August 1943
Dear Ross:
Roger Angell’s journalistic experience has been a short one, because he went right from college into the Army Air Force. He had a summer working at Simon & Schuster’s reading manuscripts, submitting opinions, and doing general chores. He was, I am quite sure, well thought of around there. Simon gave him a very strong letter recommending him for O.C.S. (He’s a corporal at the moment, teaching power turrets at Lowry.)
He also worked one summer at Country Life, as editorial office boy and handyman. He has a Harvard degree. In his prep school, he edited the school paper.
My belief is that he has a rather sharp editorial talent which these meager jobs do not indicate. When my wife was editing the New Yorker Short Story Book, Roger turned out to have a pretty sound knowledge of that kind of stuff and helped her with opinions and recommendations, practically all of which made a good deal of sense. He did some reading and general work for us when we were getting together the Subtreasury of American Humor, and again his opinions were pretty darn good and he seemed informed as well as critical.
I invariably use him as a first reader of newsbreaks whenever he is around the house, as he is air tight and is, in fact, one of the few living authorities on New Yorker newsbreaks. He actually remembers them. It’s uncanny.
Although he is a member of the family I have little hesitancy in recommending him for a shot at editorial work. He lacks practical experience but he has the goods.
Much obliged for your interest & all,
White
P.S. Since my first letter to you, he has been picked, with one other soldier, to write a history of Lowry Field for the Air Corps. My God.
To HAROLD ROSS
[North Brooklin, Maine]
20 Sept [1943]
Dear Mr. R.:
Thanks for the letter. Am not trying to convince anybody that there won’t be wars, as I don’t believe it myself. Am merely asserting devotion to, and some faith in, an idea for which wars have been fought before and will be again. Thing that got me going was the constant implication that the idea had better be adjusted to fit the requirements of the winning side. I think it is a non-adjustable idea, like a non-adjustable wrench, and you got to take it or leave it. I am also aware that Nature governs Man and regards many of these questions as academic. The disappearance of the eel grass is easily as disturbing as the concentration of troops along the Channel. I am composting rockweed with sheep manure and producing a complete fertilizer without chemicals.
EBW
• White asked Daise Terry to mail two identical letters to him, one by air mail, the other by regular mail, to see whether air was quicker.
To DAISE TERRY
[North Brooklin, Maine]
[September 25, 1943]
[Postcard]
White calling. The two letters arrived together, same mail, same bag, same morning. I enjoyed them both very much. See you soon.
(I have always known that the airplane was essentially a slow poke. Fusses around too much at the start and finish. Flashy, but impractical.)
• In the fall of 1943, White, who had been having “head trouble,” ended up in a hospital in Cambridge, where he underwent an operation on his nose—a turbinectomy. This gave him no relief but was, as he said, “the fashionable nose operation of the time.” His stay in the hospital resulted in the piece “A Weekend with the Angels,” published in The New Yorker, January 22, 1944, and later reprinted in his collection The Second Tree From the Corner.
To GUSTAVE S. LOBRANO
[Boston]
[October 1943]
Sunday
Zone of Quiet
Dear Gus:
They couldn’t think of anything else to do with me, so they removed a small bone from my head—just on the chance. I rather enjoyed it, on the whole. It’s steadying to have a little surgery when you’re feeling keyed up: Keeps your mind focussed on a single spot instead of all over the place. They got at the bone through my right nostril, which I consider very resourceful, and the morphine was just what I had been needing all along. Nothing more relaxing than a good cutting by a man who knows one end of a knife from the other.
Hospitals are fun now because all the competent people have gone off to the fighting fronts, leaving the place in charge of a wonderfully high-spirited group of schoolgirls to whom sickness is the greatest lark of the century. They pop in your room at 3 a.m. looking perfectly beautiful and wanting to rub your back simply because they have been taught the back-rub. I am writing a casual about them which I’ll finish if it doesn’t key me up too much.
Am leaving for Maine Tuesday night, arriving Wednesday morning. Am looking for you to arrive any time thereafter and stay a long while.
Love to all the boys and girls on 43rd Street.
A
ndy
The only change this operation will make in our sheep catching plans will be that you will do all the rough physical work instead of only nine tenths of it.
To HARRY LYFORD
North Brooklin, Maine
28 October 1943
Dear Harry:
. . .Your sod-soaker hit here about three weeks ago and liked it so well it has been here ever since. Nobody has ever seen such a dirty wet fall, and my sheep are still on the island and my house is rapidly becoming an island, too.
I’m recovering from a nervous crack-up which visited me last summer and which has given me a merry chase. I never realized nerves were so odd, but they are. They are the oddest part of the body, no exceptions. Doctors weren’t much help, but I found that old phonograph records are miraculous. If you ever bust up from nerves, take frequent shower baths, drink dry sherry in small amounts, spend most of your time with hand tools at a bench, and play old records till there is no wax left in the grooves.
We’re leaving Maine tonight for Boston, New York, Boise, Denver, and then New York for the winter if we can get an apartment. We’ll be working for The New Yorker as usual. My theory about myself and the war is that I can contribute most from my old editorial perch, where my screams and flappings are not supervised by any agency. One thing the end of the war will mean for me is that I can get another of those cheeses. We still talk about it.
Yrs,
Andy
To HAROLD ROSS
[New York]
[December 1943]
Mr. Ross:
I agree (and always have agreed) to do newsbreaks for The New Yorker (and for no other publication). I agree cheerfully to this. And since I agree to perform this service for The New Yorker—and am very glad to get the work—there is no reason to pay me a large sum of money. I would regard such a payment as a gift, or a stunt, or a device, and I do not want any gift, or any part in any stunt or device.
As for the proposed raise in the weekly salary payment, I would be glad to get a raise any time it is permissible to give me one. I understand that it is not now permissible.
I long ago made an agreement with myself not to sign agreements with publications. This has worked out well, and I have no reason for changing my way of living and working.
E. B. White
To STANLEY HART WHITE
25 West 43 Street
[mid-January 1944]
Monday night
Dear Bun:
I spent the weekend wishing that you weren’t sick, and wondering whether there was anything I could do for you. Mildred called me up and said that you were in a hospital in Chicago, for a going-over.1
Is there anything you would like, such as a pony and pony-cart? I would be glad to send you a pony. I always wanted one, and figured that my only chance of getting one would be if I was laid up in a hospital.
If you want me to come out to Chicago and manage your doctors for you, let me know, as I have just had a great deal of experience managing doctors. I had a nose operation in Boston last fall, which didn’t amount to a damn, and which really turned out to be a godsend, because I wrote a piece for The New Yorker about being in a hospital and got paid more than the doctor charged me for the operation, which I considered a very unusual feat, as well as a clearcut victory over the medical fraternity. You will find the piece in last week’s issue if you want to know about my hospitalization.
Joe returned to Exeter last week after his vacation, most of which he spent in bed chewing sulfa pills. I had a letter from him this morning saying that he was way behind on Latin but had been admitted to a riflery class—which is going to present a problem to the academy because he is left-handed and likes to sneak up on his target from behind. I have always wished that you could know Joe better so that you could teach him all the things you taught me. I started to make a list, the other day, of the things you taught me between the ages of four and fourteen, and it is quite an interesting list. I will show it to you sometime. You have probably forgotten. Once a teacher, always a teacher.
Roger and Evelyn (his wife) were here on furlough last week, and Nancy was here with her baby. I am a grandfather by proxy, which is the most convenient way to be one.
Don’t forget to let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
Yrs,
En
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
[February 1944]
[Interoffice memo]
Mrs. White
I have just been amusing myself computing what it cost me in money to write the Classics Club poem.1 My refusal of the book club judgeship last summer was because I suspected I might want to write something, some time, about a book club, and I presume this poem is it. Figuring the judgeship at approx. $30,000 (over a period of say ten years, which is just a guess), and subtracting the $175 I got for writing the poem, I make the cost only $29,825. Probably the most expensive poem I ever wrote.
EBW
• Harold Ross felt the way White did about the “digesting” of articles and stories, and in December 1943 he notified the Reader’s Digest that they could no longer reprint New Yorker material. A little later it became apparent that DeWitt Wallace was planting articles in periodicals in order to be able to reprint them later in the Digest, and that he was paying large sums to both writers and magazines. Ross and White felt that the Digest, in generating the contents of other publications, was exercising an unhealthy amount of editorial control over the magazine field. In February 1944, at Ross’s request, White wrote a letter, “To Our Contributors,” for The New Yorker in which he criticized the practice. It was signed “The Editors.” The New York Times picked it up, and some fur flew in the publishing world.
To STANLEY HART WHITE
115 East 35 Street
2 March 1944
Dear Bun:
I’ve been so messed up with one thing and another I haven’t had any time for letter writing. The New Yorker is a worse madhouse than ever now, on account of the departure of everybody for the wars, leaving only the senile, the psychoneurotic, the maimed, the halt, and the goofy to get out the magazine. There is hardly a hormone left in the place. . . .
The Reader’s Digest bust-up has reverberated all over the map, and slews of letters have come in to us from readers and writers, tipping their hats. There has been quite a lot of publicity about it in newspapers and magazines, with editorial comment, and today I learned that the New Republic is going to cut loose, too. The tough news is that our reporter, [John] Bainbridge, who is working on a comprehensive story about the Digest, has just been reclassified 1-A and will probably soon disappear, like everybody else.
Have about decided to go to a doctor about my head, as there seems to be a kite caught in the branches somewhere. But it’ll probably be six months before I get around to going. We got our seed order off yesterday, splitting it between Peter Henderson and Joseph Harris. It always steadies me to buy seeds, even though I don’t know what to do with them when they arrive. Luckily K does. We’re going back to Maine the 17th of this month, two weeks from tomorrow, and Joe will be with us for his spring holidays.
My book [One Man’s Meat] is going to be republished this June with some new stuff, none of it very hot. My publishers regard this as a rather pale venture and I guess they are right. Well, another month or six weeks and the smelt will be running in the brooks—and for the same old reason.
En
To STANLEY HART WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
[March 1944]
Sunday
Dear Bun:
This has been a wonderful week for us here, with plenty of lambing and smelting and all kinds of weather. There was a snow squall the first night, and next morning it came off cold—one above. Season’s first lamb arrived that afternoon, while Joe and I were sawing some firewood into short lengths to fit into a smelt-tent stove. We had the ewe in a horse stall right next to us and the sound of our bucksaw and her labor pains were all one sound. Next morning we got up at f
ive-thirty and started for Surry Bay with a sack of wood and a bottle of clam worms. It was snowing hard and continued to snow all day. We had never fished for smelt through the ice before, and we were warned that if we wanted to try it we’d have to go right away because the ice was expected to leave the Bay that week on the big tides which, with the softening weather, cause the bust-up. Smelt tents are little houses framed with light sticks and covered with grain sacks that have been stretched tight. A normal size tent is four feet by five feet, with a height at the ridge of a few inches less than standing room. There were about three dozen tents in the middle ground on Surry Bay, making a sort of little village. The tents are painted all colors of the rainbow—whatever paint a man happens to find left over from some other job. You would think that spending a day sitting on an ice cake in a snowstorm you would be in danger of being cold, but the reverse is the case. With the stove going, you are apt to get overdone. The fish hole is a foot wide and the full width of the tent, and gets skimmed over every night so you have to break it out with an ax before you start fishing. The lines are made fast to pegs on a stick which is suspended by flexible wooden arms directly over the hole. My tent had five lines. You sit on a box or keg. Directly in front of you are the lines—like a rather primitive harp. At your left is a tiny shelf for your worms, with a small hole through which light can enter so you can see to bait your hooks. Just beyond the fish hole sits the stove, about as big as a rich man’s stomach. Next to it is your tiny pile of stovewood, each stick about eight inches long. Everything in a smelt tent is in miniature, and even the smelt are miniature fish. It is a lonely existence, alone all day in a smelt tent, but you are pretty busy. Things move fast. When you haul in a smelt, you simply slap it at the strike-box and toss the hook right back down the hole. The bait usually remains. Smelt fishermen arrive all together and depart all together, and there is an unwritten law that nobody can go tromping over the ice during the fishing period—which is a couple of hours before low water and a couple of hours of the flood. The people in smelt tents talk back and forth when the fishing is dull, but when the smelt are taking hold you don’t hear anything except the occasional slap of a fish against a strike-box, and the purring of your stove, and the flutter of snow outside. We made a good catch, and had a fine day of it. Two days later the ice left, so we were just in time. This has been an unusually good winter for the smelt fishermen—the price has been up to 45 and 50 cents a pound, and fellows around here have made as much as a thousand dollars smelting.