Letters of E. B. White
Page 39
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• The Whites’ tax returns were prepared by the New York firm of Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst—the “Ernst” being their friend Morris Ernst. Because they were residents of Maine and moved back and forth between city and country, working and earning in both locales, there was often a question of how much, if anything, the Whites owed New York State in taxes. Ernst usually supervised, but delegated the details to junior members of the firm, of whom Arthur Strasburger was one.
To MORRIS L. ERNST
[New York]
March 1, 1951
Dear Morris:
Your letter is clear on all points and thanks for it. We gave Mr. Strasburger our dates of arrival in and departure from New York during 1950, and although I didn’t compute it, I take it that we are within the limit of seven months.
I think Katharine’s work would almost exactly fit the formula of 7⁄12ths. My own is less easy to figure, but I see no way to do it except by the same formula; if it satisfies the State, it satisfies me. A writer’s life and his production are so haphazard, so unpredictable, and so divided between periods of pregnancy and deliverance, that there can never be any sharp means of reckoning his time and his fruits. These days he is lucky to be fruity at all, and the State ought to be glad to learn that he’s still alive.
Yours,
E. B. White
To MARGARET RAUSCH
[New York]
March 6, 1951
Dear Miss Rausch:
Thanks for your letter of February 28. I don’t want the piece reprinted in a textbook.1 It was written in 1943, and China, in that innocent year, was not a Communist land. I used the Chinese delegate as a symbol of wisdom. I’m afraid that the school-children of 1951 might mistake him for a symbol of Communism. Such are the ravages of time.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• The poem referred to in this letter is “I Paint What I See.” White writes: “Miss Lausch was not the only reader who thought I was siding with Rivera, who was a Communist, and against Rockefeller, who wasn’t. In the course of my long literary life I’ve learned that some readers just can’t believe that a writer can ever be objective: they read something deep or symbolic or sinister or political into every work.”
To GRETCHEN E. LAUSCH
[New York]
April 10, 1951
Dear Miss Lausch:
Years ago, a mural was painted by the artist Rivera on the walls of a building in Rockefeller Center. It was attacked by critics on the score that it was leftwing propaganda. And it was removed, after a controversy between the Rockefellers and the artist.
My poem simply reported the event, in ballad form. I’m a minnesinger from away back.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To LEWIS REYNOLDS
[New York]
April 24, 1951
Dear Mr. Reynolds:
I’m very grateful for your note of condolence. Fred has been gone more than two years, but I can’t see that he has slipped any. He’s on my mind a good deal, and I’m not entirely sure that all his bills are paid—he charged everything.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MIRIAM L. RICHMOND
[New York]
May 1, 1951
Dear Miss Richmond:
I’m enclosing a couple of copies of the poem [“Song of the Queen Bee”]. Can’t send you a clipping from the magazine, as that particular issue got used up and none is available.
Sorry to report that the situation among bees has changed since I wrote the poem. The scientists won, and queens have been inseminated artificially. The drone not only isn’t in the air, he’s not even conscious—they knock him out with CO2. Ah, progress!
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To CARRIE A. WILSON
[New York]
May 1, 1951
Dear Mrs. Wilson:
I find the world very perplexing, just as you do, although I don’t think our armies are simply serving Standard Oil. That is too thin a story of so great an effort.
If the vexatious world of people were the whole world, I would not enjoy it at all. But it is only a small, though noisy, part of the whole; and I find the natural world as engaging and as innocent as it ever was. When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed, and I have no complaints.
Many thanks for your very kind and encouraging letter.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• Alexander Lindey was another of the lawyers at Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst who worked on the Whites’ tax affairs. Later he went in business for himself and represented White when he was negotiating the sale of the motion picture rights to Charlotte’s Web.
To ALEXANDER LINDEY
[New York]
May 2, 1951
Dear Mr. Lindey:
Thanks for the progress report. I have abandoned the notion that the State, or the Federal Government, will ever understand writers, and am content with a denominator of 250 if that is the denominator that appeals to them. There is considerable evidence to support the theory that writers are not worth understanding, anyway. It is certainly true that they spend 90 per cent of their time in questionable and often gaudy pursuits that seem irrelevant to the business of creation. I think they can be likened to a prestidigitator, one of whose hands is extremely active, attracting the eye of the beholder, while the other hand, unnoticed, is doing the real work of stuffing a handkerchief into a false pocket. I don’t fully understand writers myself, and never fail to be surprised and pleased when I manage to produce a handkerchief.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• Asked to tell more about the “incident” in the following letter, White had this to say:
“It all happened a long time ago. As I recall it, some wag had stolen the sign in front of John S. Sumner’s Society for the Suppression of Vice, carried it home to his Village apartment, and put it to use as a cocktail tray. The New Yorker learned of this and ran a short piece about it in Talk. Sumner was sore as the dickens and tried to pry the name of the thief from the editors—without success. As a peace offering, the magazine suggested that it provide the Society with a fine new sign, and Sumner accepted the offer. At this point, master minds around the office got to work and dreamed up an elaborate scheme to further embarrass the Society and the foul world of Anti-Vice. Ralph Ingersoll and I hired a carpenter to build a sign with a false front—that is, it had a panel that could be slid out, exposing a quite different scene. We persuaded an artist (I think it was Arno) to paint a picture of Sumner in which his hat was being kicked off by an almost naked chorus girl. The plan was to present the sign and, after it was hung, visit the place some dark night and remove the panel, leaving Mr. Sumner fully exposed with his high-kicking cutie. I was elected to perform this act of thievery and actually did pull it off, with the help of my friend Ted Pratt. I can’t imagine The New Yorker up to any tricks like that nowadays.”
To THEODORE PRATT
[New York]
May 16, 1951
Dear Ted:
The incident of the sign seems to stay alive, garnished and changed with the dimming of memories. Hutchens called me about it and I filled him in as best I could.1 I don’t think Woollcott had any share in the plot—you must have been thinking of Ralph Ingersoll. He was the master mind, but was noticeably absent when it came to climbing a ladder. Anyway, it is all going to be revived in a dismal book by Dale Kramer called “Ross and The New Yorker,” advance sheets of which I have seen.
And what petty thieveries are you up to these grim days, sweet my ladder man?
Yours,
E. B. White
To JAMES THURBER
North Brooklin, Maine
14 June 1951
Dear Jim:
I feel like a louse, or tick, for not h
aving written sooner in answer to your nice letters, but have been having my spring orgy in the barn, settling arguments among the geese, taking temperatures, replacing young robins fallen from nests, stepping on the edges of hoes and rakes, challenging black flies to fifteen rounds without even attempting to make the weight, and constructing jury-rig incubators that would make Rube Goldberg blush. My life as a gooseherd the past three weeks would be worth setting down, if I had a moment, but there are no moments available around here at this season. I raised three young geese and a gander last year, and this spring they thought they would take a whirl at sex and reproduction. In March the gander decided that an ordinary 10-quart galvanized pail would do for a mating pond (his exact words were, “I’m ready if you girls are”) and when I got back here in May the three geese were all sitting on eggs in three nests that I had lined up in the barn. When the first egg hatched and the goose saw the result of her labors, she jumped off, grabbed the gosling by the neck, and threw it high and wide. The gander and the other two geese cheered the play loudly. I heard this rally, retrieved the gosling, placed it in a small carton at the back of the kitchen stove, and raised it by hand. Meantime the other two geese lost track, in the confusion, of which nest belonged to which goose, and I think they changed places—which resulted in giving one of them a total incubation tour of seven weeks before she was through. A day or two later, the other one quit sitting, leaving the eggs for me to sit on. I discovered that one egg was already making a noise like a gosling, and being sympathetic with claustrophobes, I placed this egg in a small box of sawdust, got a hand-drill and a pair of my wife’s scissors, took a large draft of Old Newburyport rum, and went to work. I drilled through the shell in what I thought was a likely spot, inflicting only a slight wound in the right shoulder. After an hour’s digging, I produced a gosling—somewhat premature, as it still had the yolk hanging to its ass. I rigged up an incubator, using an infra-red lamp and many other accessories I found in the attic. For 24 hours, life fluttered. I had no sleep, as the bedroom was too full of stuff for me to lie down and I didn’t feel sleepy anyway. The child lived, but I discovered it had a plugged touch-hole, due to my surgery. A goose that can’t shit is a travesty on nature (I hope your secretary isn’t reading this to you, if she is give her my love) and I felt so guilty that I spent the next three days getting the plug out. It sounds implausible, but this gosling is today not only alive but devoted to me—screams when I am out of her sight, and wants to sit in my shirt pocket for warmth and companionship. The more I see of geese, the more I think they know what they are doing.
You said in your April letter that you thought I had the wrong idea about humor in our time. I haven’t got any idea about humor except that I seldom think of anything funny to write, which is why our time doesn’t get more humor by Old “Our Time” White. Ross never gives me any encouragement, anyway, as he broods a lot about the comment page, as he has been doing for 26 years, and keeps muttering “Chrissake, I never did know how to lead off the magazine.”
We have given up our earlier idea of going somewhere for the month of July and are going to stay right spang here, where we like to be and where the food is good. Joe was here for a few days, and then returned to M.I.T. for summer school, to try to catch up with himself before the Army catches up with him. He has had his induction notice but is deferred until August 20, by reason of having taken the student exam.
I tore a fine, big gash in my skull just before leaving New York—the sort of skull wound I have often dreamed of. Did it on the hard underbelly of an awning bracket. For several days I couldn’t comb my hair, as it was impractical, and acquired a very jaunty little new hairdo that made me look quite like a belted kingfisher. Milt Greenstein drove with me to Maine, as K was ordered to travel by train, and I was scared to drive alone, as I was under the impression that there was a large piece of the awning bracket just under the first layer of grey matter.
I’m sending this letter to the NYer rather than Bermuda as I fear you may be in transit or in Connecticut. Haven’t done anything yet with Mr. E. Linden Binden Bouillon, but I don’t think that there is anything stopping me except a good night’s rest without a gosling in my pajama pocket.
Love,
Andy
To JAMES THURBER
North Brooklin, Maine
15 June 1951
Dear Jim:
Your letter got here a few hours after I mailed mine to you, addressed to the New Yorker. I don’t think you need have any qualms about the Charles L. Thurber piece, as there isn’t a word in it that isn’t affectionately written, and even if Robert queried every line, you still have every right to paint a portrait as it appears to your eye.1 Probably it is natural that members of a family should get lathered up when one of them sets out to explain an ancestor, and there is a kind of jealousy involved in it, and that, too, is natural. But as you say, it is distressing.
About the Kramer book, I don’t think the NYer is trying to stop it off, merely protesting certain things about it. I think Kramer was not quite forthright when he approached some of us. He wrote me a year ago and said he was writing a book on “American humor,” and that naturally there would be stuff in it about the New Yorker. He asked if he could see me and I said sure. I was in Maine at the time, and he didn’t get to see me till fall, and when he turned up, the book had somehow acquired the title “Ross and The New Yorker.” However, despite this somewhat cagey approach, I sat around for a couple of hours trying to give him what assistance I could. I also spent a whole day going over his mimeographed sheets, pencilling in stuff. My only out-and-out gripe was that he had dug up several extracts from a youthful diary of mine, which I think he had no right to do and which didn’t make any sense anyway. The way he worked it, it certainly sounded as though I had handed him the stuff—or at any rate it would have seemed that way to anybody who hadn’t read “One Man’s Meat,” and the world is full of such people. I agree with you that The New Yorker can’t expect to publish profiles, or anything else, unless it is willing to have the tables turned. I don’t think Kramer has written much of a book, but that’s beside the point.
Yrs,
Andy
To DAISE TERRY
[North Brooklin, Maine]
1 August [1951]
Dear Daise:
Here’s something to go back to the Boys’ Room, or Capote Hall.1 Hope you are well. On second thought, you are always well, so I can relax. We are through the worst of the summer—the “vacation” part, and are now back at work. Breath is coming regularly again, but the extreme exhaustion has taken its toll. I have never figured out why we spend July in this place—it is like a children’s party at which Olsen and Johnson drop in. Among other records shattered in July here was the record for rainfall and thunder. We not only went through all the usual routine of haying and berrying and transplanting and baby sitting and canning and freezing and Picnicking, but we did it with the water up around our knees and the lightning playing up and down our shinbones. If you want any hay, let me know. How are all those little girls that surround you in that enchanted circle? I suppose you have a whole new set of faces for me to memorize. Tell Milton [Greenstein] there is enough driftwood on my beach, after the last southeaster, to provide him with a hundred thousand lamp bases—all of them gnarled and curious. Did you know Milton was a sucker for driftwood? It was the only thing on this place that really stirred his fancy. Holiday Magazine wants me to tour America for them next month, so I better get the names of some of those motels from you. Am really too weak to tour America, except in an ambulance.
Yrs,
E. B. White
• Holiday asked White to drive coast to coast, as he had done in 1922, and write some pieces about America. He accepted, but got only as far as Galeton, Pennsylvania. “I discovered that I was traveling so fast I might as well be home in bed, and I didn’t see any way to slow down, so I gave up the idea . . .” he wrote his brother Stanley at the time. The assignment was passed on to John St
einbeck, who made the trip and wrote Travels with Charley. When Howard Cushman heard about White’s prospective trip he sent him some notes on their 1922 journey.
To HOWARD CUSHMAN
North Brooklin
29 October [1951]
Dear Cush:
Your notes, thank God, were just where I thought they were, and they are now herewith enclosed—with thanks again for having gone to all that bother.
Here are a few remarks, page by page, for what they’re worth and with no warranty of their accuracy.
Page 1. According to my journal, we left Mount Vernon at 3:30 of a Thursday afternoon. The date was March 9, and we were in Poughkeepsie by nightfall—a fine, brisk run. So that meal at the Smith Brothers restaurant must have been supper, not lunch. We holed up in a hotel, where you promptly composed the first triolet of the excursion.
She holds me in Poughkeepsie,
I cannot get away;
She thinks I ain’t a gypsy—
She holds me in Poughkeepsie,
Until with her I’m tipsy:
I guess I’m stuck for aye.
She holds me in Poughkeepsie,
I cannot get away.
(We weren’t wasting any time, and those lyric forms from France rode with us all the way.) We spent the next night (no triolets) in Schenectady, at, I guess, the Beta house. In case it has slipped your mind, you carried a tobacco called Serene Mixture, and I found this appropriate, since serenity was to be our keynote. In East Aurora, the waltzes were Schubert. I can still play one of them, but not well.