Letters of E. B. White
Page 45
January 25, 1954
Dear Mrs. Ames:
It was kind of you to bring up the possibility of my working at Yaddo.1
If ever I arrive at the point where I sit down to do some writing, I shall remember your invitation, but I’m still writing standing up. In fact, I sometimes think that the only conditions that make me write at all are the familiar and well-loved annoyances of home, of office, and of headlines, and that a setting of planned quietude and the hush of undisturbed creative effort would merely unnerve me. Even at home in Maine, where I have a “study” of my own, I seldom use it for writing, but instead work in the middle of the living room where the household tides run strongest.
But I’m grateful to you for the idea.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To STANLEY HART WHITE
229 East 48 Street
11 March 1954
Dear Bun:
I broke a toe on Monday and have been slowed up in writing to thank you for “Samuel Tilly White,” which is quite a piece about quite a man. It took me completely by surprise, and that was half the fun. I can hardly believe that tomorrow marks the century.1 You mentioned in your memorial essay that there was a likeness discernible in the Times photograph. Baby, you should have seen me this week—carrying a cane. I not only looked a little like Father, I felt like Father. A cane is what does it, in the end. It gives dignity, direction, restraint, and a general sense of owning whatever you set the point of the cane down on. A broken toe isn’t bad, and I rather recommend it—specially if you are troubled (as I often am) by the Notself.2 The minute I broke my toe, my head felt wonderful. Everything was concentrated conveniently into a small, distant member, and I had no other troubles or doubts for a couple of days. They are beginning to crowd back on me now, as the pain recedes, and I am having to wave the cane at them, as at a small noisy dog.
I thought your tribute was as happy (and felicitous) as it was unexpected. Pop was a golden man living in a golden age, doing it well, and barely realizing that he was dumping six kids into an age of terror and destruction. I think at the end he worried a bit about this, and he did not underestimate either the meaning or the damage of the First War; but I’m glad he died before the real carnage began—not because he wouldn’t have had the character to stand up to it but because it would have destroyed the pattern that you and I like to remember, and that he fitted so beautifully.
It is hard to know, precisely, what a parent transmits to a child, and I have often wondered—not only about what I received from Father but about what I handed along to Joe. Pop was not only conservative (in a rather sensible and large-spirited way) but he was tidy in large and small ways, and I think those are the traits that found their way into the second generation. I can see it in my work. I don’t always like it, but I can usually see it. I don’t know whether a passionate love of the natural world can be transmitted or not, but like the love of beauty it is a thing one likes to associate with the scheme of inheritance. Anyway, I want to say thanks for your lovely and successful attempt to recapture something that is very dear to all.
K and I have had a long-drawn-out succession of melancholy and dreary events, since about the first of December when I got sick to my gut. After Christmas, K got the intestinal flu, then I got it, then K received word that her sister Rosamond in Sarasota was hospitalized for an operation, then the sudden news of Rosamond’s death. K had to take off immediately for Sarasota, because her 92-year-old aunt was being evicted from the house. I couldn’t go along, as I wasn’t well enough, so Nancy went—leaving her little family of half-grown children in Easton, Pa. While K was away, I tried to take on some extra work for The New Yorker and pounded myself so hard that I developed shingles. K got back to town and two days later came down with mumps. (I’m not making this up.) Minnie, our dachshund, observing that everybody else was swinging it, came down with the tapeworm, and she is so old (fifteen) that her doctor decided she would not be able to survive the regular tape treatment, and would have to have the “B” treatment—far more complicated. K’s mumps were horrible, and the penicillin shot that the doctor gave her backfired. One night the refrigerator got into the act by expelling carbon fumes, or something, and we sat up all night in our overcoats with the windows wide open to ward off asphyxiation. And so the days wore on. Monday, having nothing better to do, I broke my toe rather sullenly against a door.
Our real problem, of course, is Aunt Crully. To Katharine she is like her own mother, as she brought the girls up. We leave by train on Saturday for Sarasota to get her settled temporarily, with nurse attending, and then later on we will probably bring her to Maine and settle her into the house. She was with us there for quite a spell when we were living there the year round. Well, it’s been quite a winter and I hope it’s over. So far I haven’t developed mumps.
Love,
En
To URSULA NORDSTROM
25 West 43rd Street
March 12, 1954
Dear Ursula:
The beautiful copy of “Charlotte’s Web” arrived and is being much admired.1 I show it around as though I had bound it myself. I haven’t inscribed it to myself yet, as I haven’t been able to think what to write on that page that tells all about how it sold so many copies, but I am looking forward to the autographing, from me to me—a wonderfully narcissistic occasion. I’m going to do it while leaning over a pool.
Anyway, this is my most beautiful book. I shall treasure it always, treasure you always, treasure Harpers always, and try not to lay up my treasure on earth but take it with me. . . . Katharine is just over mumps, I am just over shingles, Minnie is just over tapeworm, and I have just broken the third toe of my right foot. How are you?
And thanks again.
Andy
To BRISTOW ADAMS
25 West 43 Street
29 March 1954
Dear BA:
I was delighted to get the tear-sheet from that unrecognizable Sunpaper, and I wish I could have heard your fifteen minute commentary. I can’t seem to recall whether the Sun ran book reviews in my day, but at least it placed the masthead at the top of the column. What do they call it now—the maststep?
I’m glad you like Mr. Volente.1 I wrote it a long time ago for Harper’s and they didn’t want to run it and tried to talk me out of it. Frederick Lewis Allen had just become editor, and I never did make out just what he had against the piece except I think he didn’t like the word vomit. Apparently Harper readers never throw up. Anyway, I just hung around in his office looking sheepish and not saying much in my own defense, and finally I went away and the piece appeared.
I am a grandfather. And on top of that, we are soon to be joined by Katharine’s 92-year-old Aunt Caroline, better known as Aunt Crully. She tips the scales at an even 80 lbs., and likes sherry . . . She’s quite deaf but I can make her hear after we’ve both had a couple of rounds.
Love to Louella.
Ever thine,
Andy
To SHIRLEY WILEY
[New York]
March 30, 1954
Dear Miss Wiley:
My wife is helpful to me in my writing, but she does not write. She is an editor. An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write. I have been writing since 1906 and it is high time I got over it. A writer, however, writes as long as he lives. It is the same as breathing except that it is bad for one’s health. Some of my writings have won prizes but awards of that sort are not very much fun or satisfaction and I would rather have a nice drink of ginger ale, usually. Writing does have its rewards but they do not come in packages.
Hope I’ve answered all your questions.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To DAISE TERRY
N. Brooklin
Apr. 4, 1954
Sunday morn
Dear Miss T:
Enclosed are a few items for distribution among my friends. Blowing a living ga
le here from the NW, and the temperature this morning early was 10°. All water pails frozen solid, pasture pond solid, all doors resisting all attempts at ingress and egress, frost-proof valve on outside water line frozen, master of house all alone and frozen, barnyard sunny and full of little black-faced lambs and their mammas. I have spent most of my time, since getting here, keeping the kitchen stove hooked up to fever pitch. Coldest 4th of April since 1879. Am living on a straight diet of rye whiskey and Franco-American spaghetti. The first night I was here, though, I boiled a potato and it was quite an experience. We have a shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen here, and I finally found one of them that told how to boil a potato, and I followed directions to the letter and it came out fine. I am sitting here right now planning my Sunday dinner menu and it has just come to me—rye whiskey and Franco-American spaghetti. Luckily we had a wonderful spaghetti crop last summer, and it keeps well. I find it the most convenient of all foods because while it is warming in the saucepan I keep tasting it to see whether it is warm enough, and by the time it is warm enough to eat, it is all eaten, so that means there are no dishes to wash—all I have to do is rinse the empty saucepan and hang it up on its nail over the stove. If everybody knew my secret it would revolutionize domestic life in America.
If you encounter my wife you might tell her that I am alive, as she will be wondering about that.
Yrs,
E. B. White
To GROUCHO MARX
[North Brooklin, Maine]
April 12, 1954
Dear Mr. Marx:
Before our correspondence attains the intensity of the Shaw-Terry Letters, I want to explain my suspension in the spirit world—which is sometimes misinterpreted.1 Ross had a theory that if he could throw me with a better class of people, I might be more productive. (Ross entertained some incredibly unsound ideas and at great cost to himself.)
At any rate, once in a while he would pry me loose, and on the whole they were miserable experiences for the persons who got involved. I think of an evening when he attempted to throw me with Ginger Rogers and we all went down to Chinatown for a debauch that should live forever in Miss Rogers’ memory as an example of midnight stagnation. (Another Ross illusion was that he understood Chinese food.)
It is nice here in the spirit world and if you get here I would like to buy you a drink. Garbo is here. We maintain separate residences, for appearances’ sake.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• Mrs. P. M. Crawford had read “Afternoon of an American Boy” in The Second Tree From the Corner. She wrote to White about her own memories of growing up in Mount Vernon.
To MRS. P. M. CRAWFORD
[North Brooklin, Maine]
April 14, 1954
Dear Mrs. Crawford:
I did not go to Wilson’s Woods to pick violets, I went to catch lizards. I saw the place the other day and you couldn’t see the violets (or lizards) for the TV antennae.
Mrs. Schuyler may have been “the angry one” but she was also the one I was secretly in love with. She played the piano for assembly, too. I can remember the way Frank Wilcox used to hook his thumbs in his belt, in some of those western strong man parts, to make himself look rugged. My father, I believe, was rather keen on Ina Hammer. But I preferred a girl in one of the musical shows, who wore tights and said nothing.
I danced at the Alcazar, but only under protest and in white gloves. Haven’t thought of Molly Messiter in many a year, but it is a name that never dies in memory.
I was not called “Eddie,” I was called “En.” And I did not mind being on the Fulton Avenue bridge when a train passed under. Once, knowing that I was to pass under myself, en route to Belgrade Lakes, Me., I stationed two of my pals—Freddy Schuler and Billy Denman—on the bridge at the proper hour, so that they could wave goodbye to me as I stood triumphantly on the rear platform.
Had a letter recently from Miss Hackett of P.S. 2. She is in her eighties, is well, and spends part of the time in Washington, part upstate somewhere. The Prospect Avenue Hill was good coasting, but there were some winters when Sidney was even better, because it had an S turn in it. And it carried you through the very heart of The Dell. Our house, where I was born, stood right at the top of the hill, where the coasters gathered; and many times, on winter nights, I would have to go to bed and lie there listening enviously to the sounds of the late revellers with their Flexible Fliers and their bobs.
I can’t seem to place you in the scene, but I was not strong for red hair. Too much of it in my own family, I guess. Three cases—Marion, Stanley, and Lillian.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
14 May 1954
Dear Ursula:
The BOM plan for tying Stuart and Charlotte together, which I have named the “H-BOM” plan, is all right by me, and I look forward with pleasure to $1975, all the more so because by a curious coincidence I have just spent $1975 trying to build a small terrace on the north side of the house, and not succeeding. I couldn’t make out from your letter whether Harper was waiting on me for approval of the thing, but my recollection was that I told Cass over the phone, from Boston, that it was O.K. to go ahead.
I keep dreaming at night that I am on the witness stand and somebody is asking, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Book of the Month Club?” Actually, books are not safe to read—yesterday I lay down for a half hour after lunch, with a book, and while lying there quietly was stung under the right eye by a tremendous wasp that came along and wanted to put me out of my pain, and almost did.
Yrs,
Andy
To JOHN BRUSH
[North Brooklin, Maine]
1 July 1954
Dear John:
It was good of you to send your felicitations on my degree.1 Colby, which I think is your alma mater, gave me one a couple of weeks ago, so I am really loaded. I was amused at the skyline of Mayflower Hill—neo-Colonial surmounted by TV antennae.
Thanks for your propaganda leaflets, which I studied with much interest and I hope profit. Nothing is too orthodox for me, as I’m not very well equipped with faith and find the lack of it a darn nuisance and very hard on one’s health. I suppose I have something in me that roughly corresponds to religious feelings, but like the earth before the Lord got after it, it is without form and void.
I hope this letter reaches you before your departure for Europe. Katharine and I have been trying to depart for Europe for about eight years, now, and every time we book passage some sort of calamity overtakes us. We’ve reached the point of not daring to buy tickets, for fear of precipitating a crisis. We now have, between us, six grandchildren. Many of them are nearby, and they manage to give the illusion of a trip abroad, so we are not badly off.
Sincerely,
Andy
To GUSTAVE S. LOBRANO
North Brooklin, Maine
9 July 1954
Dear Gus:
I did a little haying yesterday—the greatest form of debauchery my body knows, with the possible exception of McNulty—and as a result I am spending today indoors paying the tab, making small, indecisive movements here and there among the quiet rooms, trying a drug now and then. This letter will be my major thing of the day. It could easily be the last thing I ever write, from the feel of it. It seems rather pat to send it to a fellow in a hospital but you’re going to get it whether you like it or not.1 I learn from the grapevine that you passed all your tests, so I presume you are now suffering from a black case of post-barium letdown. That is, I think, almost a disease in itself and should be recognized as such. So many times, on the southbound express of the Independent Subway, returning from the Medical Center after going through my annual checkup and receiving the nod from the doctor, I have felt the frightening waves of disappointment beating on my brainshore. I hope you are not having them. I don’t know any relief from them—although I usually go straight from the subway to a saloon
and build a temporary breakwater. You ought to be in a saloon, not a hospital, if my diagnosis is any good. Tell the nurse this; it is sure to amuse her.
I told Atchley about post-barium letdown one time, and he listened with the greatest attention.2 A year later, when I passed my exam, I thought he was going to walk right out and see that I got to the subway, without mishap. (No comma, sorry.)
In two days I will be fifty-five. Next paragraph.
I don’t mind being fifty-five except that I seem to be in such a hurry all the time, instead of the other way round. K is suffering today from post Thurber casual letdown, which is a lower level disease not to be compared with our high distress. The sun is out, the airs are gentle, the Boston plane is overhead bound for Boston and piloted by a man named Shorty, the hay is tumbling up into the hay-wagon unassisted by me thank the good God, the tide is coming, the mail truck is coming, the sheep are being bitten to pieces by the flies (although the sun is slowing the flies up, too), and we have people coming for dinner. Whenever I feel particularly bad we have people coming for dinner. They plan it that way.
Aside from haying and entertaining my grandchildren, I am spending the month of July in retirement, writing a memorial essay for the Yale Review celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Walden.3 I can’t think of anything to say about this event except that Thoreau preferred the sound of a cowbell to the sound of a bell in a belfry. It is hard to build an essay on that, but I take on hard stuff like that all the time. Hell, I am just through writing some bird captions for the Ford Times—which turns out to be a bird magazine. If I had known what the last days of a writer were going to be like, I would have watched my step, years ago.
The barnyard fence that you and I built in the late fall, one year, still stands in a slightly rebuilt form, and needs painting; so if you ever want to paint a fence, come down and bring your own brush. One of the queer things that’s happened here lately is that, in the middle of everything, we built a terrace. It all started from a very simple desire to set up a windbreak on the north side of the house. But before we were through we had torn out a whole wall, rebuilt a room, dug trenches to run cement for a brick wall surrounding the “terrace,” brought brick from Penobscot and flagstones from Boston, ordered a cedar windbreak (when I have any amount of cedar right on the place here), and paid a local contractor two and a half million dollars for demolishing the homestead. We got into the terrace operation before we knew that Rosamond was going to die and K was going to get mumps and I was going to get shingles and intercostal neuralgia and the lambs were going to be ripped open by a barn owl. So we were stuck with it and we are still stuck with it. But my optimism and strength know no bounds and right in the midst of all the construction I moved the roses right into the terrace borders, so the workmen could smell the delicious scent of roses while they laid bricks. The roses lived, and gradually the workmen stole away, and given another twenty years or so, it’ll be a mighty pretty little terrace. I started with one architect, but we now have two, and they don’t get on.