Letters of E. B. White
Page 42
Anyway, I admonish you to put first things first. You can’t sell world law to anybody unless you can get him on the phone, and unless he has experienced the kind of law you mean. The reason the UN committee on human rights can’t come up with anything in the way of human rights is because they are trying to draft a code of conduct that fits both the communist system and the capitalist system, and it can’t be done.
Sorry to interpose a vexatious intermediate step on the road to world order, but I’m afraid it’s there, and I don’t advise that anyone underestimate it.
Love,
Andy
To KATHERINE B. FAULKNER
[New York]
May 6, 1952
Dear Miss Faulkner:
I don’t want to lend my name to sponsor a political candidate because I occasionally contribute editorials to The New Yorker. The only sensible way for an editorial writer to live is to limit his political activities to the interior of the voting booth—that wonderful, wonderful place.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To CASS CANFIELD
[North Brooklin, Maine]
20 May 1952
Dear Cass:
Thanks for the encouraging letter. I’m awfully glad that my spider has been well received locally—or shall I say internally? Am worried, though, at not having seen the Garth Williams picture that Ursula said was being put in the works for use in the catalogue. I would like to see the picture, because I feel that the book must at all odds have a beguiling Charlotte. The solution, I am quite sure, is for the artist to depict attitudes and postures, rather than facial expression. Spiders don’t have much of any face—in fact they hardly have any head, or at least the head is relatively inconspicuous. But they have eight wonderfully articulated legs (arms), which offer a great chance for ballet treatment. Garth is such a wonderful artist that I am sure he will succeed; but for a while there he was bogged down in an attempt to produce a face.
As for my collecting some poems, or some prose, or both—I have it in mind and hope to get at it soon. Will be in New York for about a week in June—10th to 16th. Hope to see you.
Best regards,
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
24 May 1952
Dear Ursula:
Thanks for the dummy cuts and the jacket design. I like everything. The group on the jacket is charming. My only complaint is that the goose looks, for some reason, a bit snakelike. Perhaps this is because its beak is open, or perhaps because the eye is round like a snake’s. You sound so rushed that I presume you don’t want to make any revisions, and I would be satisfied to have the jacket go as is, if it seems right to you. But no goose-lover in this house is satisfied.
The web effect is OK for the purposes of jacket design, but that type of rather mussy Charles Addams attic web is not right for the illustrations. I’m sure that Garth realizes that. Charlotte weaves quite an orderly, symmetrical web, and Garth has it right in the picture of Charlotte thinking—which, incidentally, I like. Smooth legs and smooth abdomen are correct. (Actually, Charlotte’s legs are equipped with fine hairs, and these are mentioned in the book, but the overall effect is of smooth, silk-stocking legs.)
I think Fern is delightful in both pictures, and I couldn’t be happier about her. Wilbur, also, is perfect on the jacket—very beguiling. In the dummy picture, where he is lying flat, weeping, I got a momentary shock because when I first glanced at the picture, it looked as though his right front foot were his snout. If there is time, I think it would be helpful simply to remove that foot entirely, leaving his snout nicely outlined against the straw. (I’ve tried this, by blocking it out with my fingernail, and it looks fine with just one front leg showing.) And by the way, I think Harper & Brothers should take Charlotte’s advice: Never hurry and never worry. What’s all this rosh, rosh, rosh?
On the whole I am very pleased with developments, and have complete confidence that Garth will handle everything beautifully. If this letter isn’t helpful or doesn’t answer what is necessary to know, call me up. Our number here is Sedgwick (Me.) 106.
Sincerely,
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
23 July 1952
Dear Ursula:
The corrected drawings are fine and I am very grateful to Garth for his trouble. I don’t think it is necessary to do anything about Mrs. Arable in #3. She looks all right.
Thanks for the tall tales of Robert the Bruce.1 Spiders expect to have their webs busted, and they take it in their stride. One of Charlotte’s daughters placed her web in the tie-ups, right behind my bull calf, and I kept forgetting about it and would bust one of her foundation lines on my trips to and from the trapdoor where I push the manure into the cellar. After several days of this, during which she had to rebuild the entire web each evening, she solved the matter neatly by changing the angle of the web so that the foundation line no longer crossed my path. Her ingenuity has impressed me, and I am now teaching her to write SOME BOOK, and will let Brentano have her for their window.
My wife has a virus infection of the liver, called hepatitus—probably spelled wrong but certainly no fun any way you spell it. She is yellow all over and can’t eat, and is supposed to be enjoying her vacation of three weeks from the New Yorker editing job.
Sincerely,
Andy
To GUSTAVE S. LOBRANO
North Brooklin, Maine
29 July 1952
Dear Gus:
I’ve been slack about writing you about my hepatitis victim, but have been largely engaged motoring betwixt here and Bangor to view the patient. I tried to phone you last week and just missed you at the lunch hour. K is considerably more cheerful, and more comfortable, than she was on Thursday morning last, when I converted my DeSoto Non-Firedome Eight into an ambulance and rolled north up the mighty Penobscot, to Ward S. I have no doubt that you have already heard directly from the Ward, for she keeps needling me for letter paper and stamps. She is a beautiful shade of yellow, with blue polka dot design—where the student nurses try their skill at hypodermics. They are robust, carefree girls, wildly aiming. My talks with the doctor lead me to believe that hepatitis is a virus infection of the liver, that it can be caused by a fly bite or by eating a small snack of contaminated food at a modern sanitary air-conditioned drugstore counter, or even in the home. Jaundice (or what hereabouts is called the janders) is an associated phenomenon. A funny coincidence in this case is that K’s doctor is himself recently recovered from hepatitis; and there is a strong local suspicion that she contracted the disease from him—a just punishment for the crime of consorting with an Ellsworth medico instead of a Blue Hill man. I have within the last two days greatly complicated the already confused business by coming down with a rotten cold—which leaves K thoroughly stranded. I can’t even phone her, as the telephone hasn’t struck Bangor yet.
Both of the doctors in this case have tipped me off to one thing, namely that the convalescence is apt to be a long drawn out affair, and that rest and relaxation are the only cure. I pass along this tip, so that you can bear it in mind in planning ahead for fiction department operation. My prediction is that she will soon be calling for work; and my advice is to accede to her demands rather reluctantly, in the Stevenson manner. It will, I think, pay to short-change her for a while.
Our summer, as you can imagine, has been a rather sick thing—an afternoon snooze from which one wakes feeling depressed and queasy. The heat and the drought persist; fields and lawns are like badly laid cement floors; crops languish. All during June and early July I was seized with the worst hay fever in years. K started to get vague pains about July 4, and I think carried the disease around with her for quite a spell before it leapt at her throat, and at her liver. I slept through most of the political conventions, but had a wonderful stroke of luck at the end. I was awakened at about 2 one morning, because I had inadvertently left the sprinkler runn
ing, had pumped (by so doing) my spring dry, and had filled the water pipes, toilets, heaters, etc. with noisy air. I merely turned all valves and master switches and was about to fall back into bed when Joe informed me that the balloting was over and that Stevenson would be on in a minute. So I sat down at the radio and heard the acceptance speech. It seemed a wonderfully healing sound after the razzle dazzle.
Hope you are well, strong, happy, fit, and convinced that all is for the best. Well, almost all.
Love,
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
29 Sept [1952]
Dear Ursula:
Thanks for your dandy letter and for the book. If I ever get time I’m going to read the book. I think it looks very nice and I agree with you that the endpaper is too bright. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that anybody thinks about endpaper except publishers, and probably not more than 1800 people in the United States have ever heard the word “endpaper,” and they are all Stevenson people.
Enclosed are some remarks that I hope will satisfy your Publicity Department.
Sorry to learn that Dr. [Henry] Canby is revolted by spiders. Probably he doesn’t meet the right spiders. . . .
Yrs,
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
25 West 43rd Street
22 October 1952
Dear Ursula:
Thank you for your letters of the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 21st, with their newsy enclosures. I have been meaning to call you up, and in fact did call you up, but your operator said you were talking and I am not a man to interrupt a lady when she is talking.
So far, “Charlotte’s Web” seems to have been read largely by adults with a literary turn of mind. I have had only a sprinkling of childhood reaction to the book—those vital and difficult precincts—and will not know for a little while how it sits with the young. I have a step grandchild named Caroline Angell who is a quiet little girl of about five. She listened attentively to the reading of the book by her father, and said: “I think there was an easier way to save Wilbur, without all that trouble. Charlotte should have told him not to eat, then he wouldn’t have been killed because he would have been too thin.”
Trust an author to go to a lot of unnecessary trouble.
Yrs,
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
25 West 43rd Street
October 28, 1952
Dear Ursula:
Don’t stop writing me so many letters.
Have been out of town buying sheep. Was gone three days, and bought four sheep, which is better than a sheep a day. Covered five states and saw Adlai Stevenson in the flesh. He is not as pretty as one of the sheep, but he seemed in good order.
Yours,
Andy
P.S. My first fan mail on Charlotte was a long letter from a California vegetarian, who feels that my book shows that I am ripe to take the veil and live on grain, fruit, and nuts. I guess I’ll never lack for nuts, anyway.
To PHILIP M. JOHNSON, M.D.
[New York]
November 14, 1952
Dear Dr. Johnson:
The New Yorker has never argued that there are any areas of government that are sacrosanct and beyond criticism. And after the last four months I don’t think you need worry about whether the minority can take a swing at the party in power. Our complaint was that the Republicans, when they were on the subject of Korea, seldom let a chance go by to play on the strings of parenthood—the tears of mothers, the anxieties of fathers—and whenever this happened we called it a low punch. As a person, I am as jumpy about Korea as the next man, as I have a son who is about to go into the service, but I try not to let my jumpiness get in the way of my judgment about what is happening there and why. Korea is, I believe, the first example of military action undertaken on the basis of a charter agreement among member states of a world organization. Nobody knows whether it will prove out, and I’m not optimistic about the efficacy of “collective security” as a device; but I certainly think it is unique and different. The term “police action” carries with it no implication that it is less bloody than it is, and I don’t think the Administration has ever so implied. Certainly The New Yorker didn’t in its comment.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MRS. DAMON BOYNTON
[New York]
November 20, 1952
Dear Mrs. Boynton:
I didn’t know there was a Democrat in Trumansburg [New York] but it’s nice to hear from one. And when I recall that I once walked two-thirds of the way across the Fall Creek bridge on the handrail, and that you might have been playing down below, it terrifies me.1
Many thanks for writing.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To URSULA NORDSTROM
25 West 43rd Street
December 5, 1952
Dear Ursula:
I am relieved to learn that the first printing [50,000 copies] wasn’t too ambitious and that there will be a second. My wife is buying a great many copies and has, I believe, managed to exhaust the first printing almost singlehanded. I’m not sure there is any profit for the author in this sort of arrangement, but I shall not attempt to work it out on paper.
Would it be all right if I sent the librarians some candles for Christmas, for use in their candlelight meeting? I mean the kind that explode.1
Sincerely,
Andy
To GRADE 5-B, LARCHMONT, NEW YORK
25 W. 43
New York, N.Y.
26 December 1952
Dear Pupils of 5-B:
I was delighted to get your letters telling me what you thought about “Charlotte’s Web.” It must be fine to have a teacher who is a bookworm like Mrs. Bard.
It is true that I have a farm. It is on the sea. My barn is big and old, and I have ten sheep, eighteen hens, a goose, a gander, a bull calf, a rat, a chipmunk, and many spiders. In the woods near the barn are red squirrels, crows, thrushes, owls, porcupines, woodchucks, foxes, rabbits, and deer. In the pasture pond are frogs, polliwogs, and salamanders. Sometimes a Great Blue Heron comes to the pond and catches frogs. At the shore of the sea are sandpipers, gulls, plovers, and kingfishers. In the mud at low tide are clams. Seven seals live on nearby rocks and in the sea, and they swim close to my boat when I row. Barn swallows nest in the barn, and I have a skunk that lives under the garage.
I didn’t like spiders at first, but then I began watching one of them, and soon saw what a wonderful creature she was and what a skillful weaver. I named her Charlotte, and now I like spiders along with everything else in nature.
I’m glad you enjoyed the book, and I thank you for the interesting letters.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• In its Christmas roundup of books, December 15, 1952, Newsweek gave Charlotte’s Web a blurb that read: “Charmingly sentimental tale for children and adults about a spider and a pig, written with many a fearful glance backward for fear of horse laughs from the left.” White found this blurb cryptic and dashed off a letter to Robert Cantwell, book editor for Newsweek, but never sent it. Instead, he mailed the letter to Cass Canfield, who fired a blast at Newsweek and received an “explanation” from Cantwell—which he showed White.
To CASS CANFIELD
25 West 43rd Street
December 29, 1952
Dear Cass:
The Cantwell letter is certainly a masterpiece of Fuller Explanation, and I’m glad to have the offending clause dissected so painstakingly. I didn’t know that while writing “Charlotte’s Web” I was sitting behind a psychological barrier created by child psychologists, but one lives and learns.
The only unfavorable criticism I’ve had, of my children’s books, has been from a couple of librarians, notably Anne Carroll Moore, who read “Stuart” in galleys and wrote me a long letter against it and who doesn’t like “Charlotte” either.1 I suppose librarians regard themselves as child psychologist
s, and I’m sure they’ll be surprised to learn that this places them squarely on the left. And so it goes.
Pamela Travers2 said, in a review in an English paper, that anyone who writes for children successfully is probably writing for one child—namely, the child that is himself. I think this comes close to the truth, and if any “barrier” operates it is the internal barrier that separates the child from the man.
It’s impossible to know, of course, whether Cantwell, in that queer blurb, was trying to dunk a liberal-democrat in the red pot, or whether he was trying—as his letter suggests—to express a complicated piece of critical analysis in half a dozen words. I thought the funniest sentence in his letter was the one denying you the right to state that his review lacked clarity. I hereby give you back that right on a platter.
Yours,
Andy
To KATHARINE S. WHITE
[1952?]
[Interoffice memo]
Mrs. White:
The effect of drugs on people is entirely “mental”—just their imaginations at work. Got this from D. Terry, at lunch. Alan Dunn and Mary Petty lie on their beds and hang their hands overboard to relax them and this cures everything. Dunn has never done such good work as since he has hung his hands overboard.
E. B. White
To STANLEY HART WHITE
229 East 48
11 January 1953
Dear Bun:
Our thanks to you and Blanche for the circular candy arrangement. It exactly suited our requirements, as we now have roving bands of small children passing through the apartment, some of them lineal descendants, some of them scouts from neighboring backyards who have discovered how to get into this building and which floor to come to. The candy was much admired and quickly dispatched, and I even managed to pinch a limedrop for myself, by quick footwork. . . .