Letters of E. B. White
Page 41
You say that my refrigerator, even if it seems to be operating properly, may be producing poison gas, and you suggest that I open a window. I do not want to open a window. It would be a very unpopular move with the cook. Furthermore, I haven’t the slightest intention of living under the same roof with a machine that discharges poison gas. Your recommendation is that I get plenty of fresh air—enough to counteract the effect of the gas. But I cannot believe that you are serious.
Will you be good enough to let me know what sort of poison gas is generated by a Servel gas refrigerator, and in what quantity, and how discharged. I know that there is a vent at the top of the machine and that some sort of warm air flows from the vent. I have always assumed it was hot air. Is it something else?
I also know that a gas refrigerator poses a carbon problem, and I ask the landlord to remove the carbon about once a year, which he does. But your letter makes me think that the matter is not so simple and I am anxious to be enlightened.
If gas refrigerators are, as your letter suggests, discharging poison gases into people’s homes I don’t want to own a gas refrigerator and I shall certainly sell my stock.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To KENNETH BIRD
[New York]
December 28, 1951
Dear Mr. Bird:
I wish I might say yes to your offer of a regular job of writing for Punch. I would like very much indeed to be a contributor, but I cannot at this time take on an assignment such as you suggest.
My literary output is small, and right now I don’t feel that I should dispatch any of it overseas, however much I believe in the exchange of ideas. I must devote myself to getting at a few long-overdue projects and to finishing up some that are in various stages of completion. This will leave me no time for additional work.
You were very good to consider me and I hope you will be able to find someone to produce the sort of thing you have in mind. Thank you for your sympathetic remarks about Ross. The thought of a magazine without him is a very hard thing for us all to live with.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MARILYN BOYER
[New York]
December 31, 1951
Dear Miss Boyer:
The essay [“Once More to the Lake”] is about a man who feels a sense of identity with his son—a fairly common feeling. But the sense of identity is all mixed up with a feeling of being separated by the years. A child, by his very existence, makes a parent feel older, nearer death. So when the little boy in the essay puts on a cold, wet bathing suit, the man feels the chill, as though he were experiencing it. Only for him it is a truly chilling experience, because it suddenly seems to foreshadow death.
At your age this is perhaps hard to understand. It will become clearer to you later on. Meantime, be thankful that a wet bathing suit is just a wet bathing suit.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
X
CHARLOTTE’S WEB
1952–1954
* * *
• During the late forties and early fifties White had been at work on another book for children, inspired this time by daily life in the barn on his Brooklin farm. Charlotte’s Web was published in 1952. Although disturbing at first to some adults—White’s publishers tried to persuade him to change the ending—the book continues to be treasured by countless readers. By 1976 its sales in hardcover and paperback were more than one and a half million. [Another ten and a half million have been sold since 1976, so the present sales tally is closer to twelve million. —Ed., Rev. Edition] In 1954 Harper & Brothers also published The Second Tree From the Corner, a clipbook of pieces primarily from The New Yorker.
To LARRY EISENBERG
[New York]
February 25, 1952
Dear Mr. Eisenberg:
Thanks for the letter, the critique, and the gripe.1 In 1951, the magazine bought stuff from 63 new writers (fiction and verse—I don’t know about fact). That’s about one new face a week. It doesn’t satisfy our dream, which is to publish about a dozen new people a week, but it’s better than most magazines manage. If you don’t believe me, try keeping books on it.
All manuscripts get read—always by two editors, sometimes by four, as a check. Rejection slips are not attached mechanically, they are attached mournfully and prayerfully. The thing The New Yorker is most eager to get is good stuff from new writers. But nobody gets in except on performance, or what the editors regard as performance, which is conceivably something you might not agree with.
As for the large number of reminiscent pieces, nobody is more aware of it than we are. The trouble is, a very large proportion of everything submitted is reminiscence. I guess it’s because the world today is intolerable to sensitive minds, so they escape into the past. You fix up the world and we’ll run fewer reminiscences.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To H. K. RIGG
[New York]
13 March 1952
Dear Bun:
Bill Shawn is the new editor, not me. Don’t know where that rumor got started, but I know I’m damn glad I’m not the editor of this whizz bang sheet. Too much work in it and I don’t like the hours. Also, I don’t know how to edit.
Your piece is enclosed, as it didn’t get by. I am sorry that it got held here so long, and I tender the official apologies of the magazine for not acting quicker. This business of sitting on pieces while the author chews his fingers is something that has got to be remedied, and I am sure it will be, just as soon as we get some more manpower around here. You were the victim of the acute shortage of editors, caused partly by Ross’s death, partly by the fact that one of our guys has been on jury duty for about three months. The pressure has been bad on Shawn, but I’m damned sorry that your piece got caught in a basket.
We’re finally getting a whiff of spring weather. K and I are taking off for another short trip to Maine next week, and ought to just about hit mudtime. I think I’d rather be sailing for a warm island like Nassau, but one of the penalties of having a joint like our house in Maine is that whenever we get a breather we always head straight for there. I’ve got chicks coming and lambs coming, not to mention an oil burner for the furnace and some setting geese. If you’re thinking of raising geese I can set you up in business.
Yrs,
Andy
• When he signed the contract with Harper for Charlotte’s Web, White availed himself of a “maximum payment” clause: in order to spread his tax obligation over a period of years, he set the sum of $7500 as the limit he was to receive from the book in any one year. His estimate of the book’s earning capacity, however, proved far too low. Instead of petering out, Charlotte’s sales began a steady climb, and the book earns a lot more than $7500 every year. “The rest of the money,” White said, “is held for me by Harper—probably in a sock somewhere.”
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
27 March 1952
Dear Miss Nordstrom:
I sent a copy of the agreement to Milton Greenstein at the New Yorker, who will look it over for me. I suggested that he call you if he had any questions.
I think a limitation of $7500 would be a good idea, and I will ask Greenstein about this. It sounds like an extravagant dream to me, as I never believe that any book is going to sell.
I meant to ask you, and forgot, whether you had ever encountered any story plot like “Charlotte’s Web”—that is, any case in fiction of a spider writing words in its web. I’m not well read in juvenile literature, or any other kind, and am always fearful that I have unwittingly created something that has already been done by somebody else. If you know of anything even remotely like this, will you tell me what it is?
Wish you could be here today to see my characters in the flesh. Had a lamb arrive yesterday morning at breakfast time—a boy. He is already out in the barnyard, playing in a snowdrift. Two of my geese are nesting—one of them right in the sheepshed, the oth
er atop a manure pile. Charlotte’s children are due shortly. It’s quite a day here today.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• Garth Williams, who had done such a notable job of illustrating Stuart Little, was now at work on Charlotte’s Web. He early ran into trouble in his attempt to create a satisfactory Charlotte. The preliminary drawings showed a spider with a woman’s face. White was leery of this and tried to help Williams by sending him spider books. In the end, after many sketches had been submitted and rejected, White said, “You better just draw a spider and forget about a countenance.” And that’s what Williams did.
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
28 March [1952]
Dear Ursula:
I am too exhausted to call you Miss Nordstrom any longer. Too much typing for a man of my years.
Under sep cov I am sending you “American Spiders” by Willis J. Gertsch, of the Natural History Museum staff. Will you be kind enough to pass it along to Garth Williams for his amusement. Aranea Cavatica is not shown in this book, but there is a spider in Plate 23 called Neoscona that looks like Charlotte, pretty much. Charlotte, however, has a rather nice little design, or engraving, on top of her abdomen—sort of like a keystone.
There is a very funny picture in this book that I think Garth should see. It is “A” on the unnumbered page preceding P. 85. The eyes and hair are quite fetching.
Plate 1 shows an orb web covered with dew.
Am also enclosing a N.Y. Public Library slip giving name and class mark of the McCook work on spiders. This is in three volumes, containing hundreds and hundreds of pictures. Garth might find it helpful to thumb through these majestic tomes. He’d better watch out, though—once a man gets interested in spiders, there’s no time left for art.
Yrs,
Andy
To CASS CANFIELD
North Brooklin, Maine
29 March 1952
Dear Cass:
Your note was very encouraging and you were good to write it. After I get through with a book it always seems terrible—for a while, anyway. I’m glad I rewrote “Charlotte’s Web,” even though it took me an unconscionable time to do it, as it gained in the process, I think. Whether children will find anything amusing in it, only time will tell. No doubt they would like it better if my barn cellar were loaded into a space ship and exploded in the general direction of Mars. . . .
Yrs,
Andy
To JAMES THURBER
25 West 43 Street
6 April 1952
Dear Jim:
I’m just back from North Brooklin, where I ate a scallop stew and attended a lamb’s birth. It was a good stew and an easy birth. Before leaving, I chopped the lamb’s tail off with an ax just to show who was boss. You’ve got to keep these little creatures in their place, even if you are the Dog’s Best Friend for 1952. . . .
You should have hung around these shores one more day and taken in our party.1 A hundred and thirty-one people showed up. Stanley Hyman was the first man through the door, at 9:02. Peter Arno was the last man at the piano, a sweet player. He followed Shawn, who is hot and who performs with the same spirit of dedication as when editing a five-part profile. There was dancing of a sort, and I think the whole affair, with its contrapuntal literary and emotional atmosphere, excited Brendan Gill more than any similar cotillion he had ever attended. He found overtones in every glass. . . . We wrapped the party up at 4:45, but it had a couple of hours of early morning enchantment—the kind of goings on that made you feel that the door would presently open and in would walk Scott and Zelda. Arno, much to my surprise, came early and went the whole route. He drank gin and ginger ale, and did not get drunk. Gluyas Williams came early, took one drink, and all the blood left his head and he had to be helped up to the men’s coatroom, and then back to the Harvard Club. My theory about blood leaving a man’s head is that it suddenly leaves when he finds himself saying things he only half wants to say, to somebody whose name he has not quite caught, in a room where nobody remembered to open a window. The evening ended for MacKelway with his going to the wrong room for his coat, and finding the cook in bed. MacKelway was enchanted. “Who are you?” he asked. The cook invited him out. “That’s all right,” said Mac, indulgently, “but I just want to know, who are you?”
I see I have been misspelling McKelway. I guess this is the time of life where I start misspelling the names of people I have known since the Coolidge administration. Maybe I am misspelling Coolidge—which will be the next phase.
Not much news around here. I finally finished my children’s book and turned it in to Harper. Garth Williams is going to illustrate it.
Spring is making little sashays about coming to town, but it has been a fairly unconvincing demonstration so far. It’s what Maine people call “crow weather.” I still think Maine speech is about the most satisfactory. I asked a guy the other day where he was cutting wood. “I’m cutting on my father-in-law,” he replied. (You are the only artist to illustrate that.)
Love to you both,
Andy
To JANICE WHITE
229 East 48th
27 April 1952
Dear Jan:
Nice to get your letter, and forgive me for not answering sooner. I don’t advise you to try to federate this world over the next weekend, because I don’t think it would work. Most of the stuff in “The Wild Flag” is all right as far as it goes, but it was written prior to 1945. In 1945 it became apparent, in San Francisco, that the dream of coming out of a world war into a more orderly state of affairs was being knocked into a cocked hat. I was on the premises myself, and saw the show. The notion that the Soviet Union was a pleasant ally, and was looking for the same rainbow that we were, turned out to be just a wistful idea. So we are now in the situation of trying to save something worth federating. You can’t federate a tyrannical social order with a popular government type of social order, any more than you can federate oil and water. Since the end of the war, the nationalist spirit has been in the ascendant, largely because the tension in the world failed to relax when it was discovered that the Soviet leaders were engaged in their broadscale scheme to move into other lands, convert everybody to their religion, and, wherever expedient, to snitch the local government and annex a piece of territory. They are so convinced of the rightness of their philosophy that they are able to make a good deal of headway, being not handicapped by the same code of conduct, the same ground rules, that our society imposes. Anyway, the immediate task of people who believe in the free spirit, in the free conscience, and in government by the consent of the governed, is to nourish and sustain these lovely institutions and ideas wherever they are present in large or small degree. I think that the World Federalists (and I am one of them, although not an organization man) are currently stuck with a rather rigid program and a much too cozy blueprint. I think that the problem is not to “sell people” on federation, or “establish world law”—the problem is to hang on grimly through this hurricane that we are now encountering, and gradually to reestablish contact and communication with the vast populations with whom we are out of touch at the moment, thanks to the Iron Curtain. I think that the most precious thing in the world is not the concept of federation but the concept of justice—that is, justice as it has been developed in the western world. The only sort of One-World that I would settle for, is a One-World firmly based on that type of justice.
One of the curious paradoxes of this mirthful and mournful century is that the very process of struggling through the cold war against communist expansion tends to make us lose our grip on our own democratic techniques. We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. This is bad. I think the most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don’t like a communist. I think the most depressing thing that has happened in my lifetime is that an off
icial blacklist of actors and radio artists, called “Red Channels,” has actually become a handbook to which radio and television directors turn, before hiring an actor. This has changed the whole climate of our country. It has introduced a contagion that can sweep into every home and office, changing the world we now know into an entirely different world. I think it is terribly important that we don’t permit that change to take place.
The only light I see is that there is now some hope of a relaxation of tension; and I believe that until the present tension does relax, very little headway can be made toward the world that federalists dream of. This being a presidential year, there isn’t going to be any noticeable diminution of tension till after Election Day, but I’m hoping that there will be a healthier atmosphere then. There is very little question in my mind that eventually—maybe this century, maybe next—the world will become politically unified. There is no other sensible conclusion. It may be the unity of disaster, when we all go up in a jolly burst of fissionable fuss, or, if we can hang tight awhile, it may be a more comfortable unity, when we knock some sense into each other’s heads, quit calling each other “foreigners,” and get down to business.
I would say, offhand, that the duty of a young federalist in this decade is to quit worrying about federation, and worry about communication. Millions of Slavs, millions of Chinese, millions of Indians are out of touch with us. Their problem is not federation (of which most of them have never heard), their problem is rice and their problem is justice. Our State Department is tackling this business with the so-called Point Four program, but is greatly handicapped by lack of money (among other things), most of the money being diverted to the military defense program.