Letters of E. B. White
Page 52
I am in New York this week and will be returning home to Maine on the 11th if my wife is able to travel by then. I’m taking the book back with me for the final go-around and to give it the inestimable advantage of coming under her editorial eye. She is a better grammarian, organizer, teacher, editor, and mother than I am, and has saved an untold number of lives.
Yours sincerely,
E. B. White
To J. G. CASE
North Brooklin, Maine
17 December 1958
Dear Mr. Case:
I have removed “Introductory” and the book now has five chapters, not six. Instead of quoting Strunk’s remarks in my “Note,” as you suggested, I paraphrased them, which seemed quicker and less fussy.
The Vanity Fair quote is gone, and I was delighted to see it go. In its place are a few opening sentences from Northanger Abbey; there is nothing loose about them, and they are funny. I like this better than Mr. Gibson’s Howard’s End quote, which, out of context, seemed not to pull together. But before Gibson’s notes arrived I had been reading Forster, and I have a quote from Two Cheers for Democracy that I like that you might prefer to the Jane Austen. I will send it along.
I was busy working a lot of your and Miss N’s suggestions into the text, wherever we were in agreement, when your letter came along (December 12th date) and stopped me cold. Do you remember that wonderful moment in the McCarthy hearings when Mr. Welch turned to Mr. Cohn and in his high, friendly voice asked, “And now, Mr. Cohn, when you found that one-third of the photograph was missing, were you saddened?” (Such a wonderful verb for little Mr. Cohn.) Anyway, I was saddened by your letter—the flagging spirit, the moistened finger in the wind, the examination of entrails, and the fear of little men. I don’t know whether Macmillan is running scared or not, but I do know that this book is the work of a dead precisionist and a half-dead disciple of his, and that it has got to stay that way. I have been sympathetic all along with your qualms about “The Elements of Style,” but I know that I cannot, and will-shall not, attempt to adjust the unadjustable Mr. Strunk to the modern liberal of the English Department, the anything-goes fellow. Your letter expresses contempt for this fellow, but on the other hand you seem to want his vote. I am against him, temperamentally and because I have seen the work of his disciples, and I say the hell with him. If the White-Strunk opus has any virtue, any hope of circulation, it lies in our keeping its edges sharp and clear, not in rounding them off cleverly.
In your letter you are asking me to soften up just a bit, in the hope of picking up some support from the Happiness Boys, or, as you call them, the descriptivists. (I can write you an essay on like-as, and maybe that is the answer to all this; but softness is not.) I am used to being edited, I like being edited, and I have had the good luck and the pleasure of being edited by some of the best of them; but I have never been edited for wind direction, and will not be now. Either Macmillan takes Strunk and me in our bare skins, or I want out. I feel a terrible responsibility in this project, and it is making me jumpy. And if I have misread or misconstrued your letter, I ask your forgiveness and your indulgence.
The above, written by the below, are, of course, fighting words, and will, I am sure, bring you out of your corner swinging. But I think it is best that I get them down on paper. I want to get back to work, make progress, and make a good book; and until we get this basic thing straightened out, there isn’t much chance. It is ghostly work, at best; and surrounded as I have been lately by a corps of helpers, all of them trying to set me on the right path, it is unnerving work.1 Your letter did unsettle me on a number of counts.
All this leads inevitably to like-as, different than, and the others. I will let them lay for the moment, sufficient unto this day being the etc. My single purpose is to be faithful to Strunk as of 1958, reliable, holding the line, and maybe even selling some copies to English Departments that collect oddities and curios. To me no cause is lost, no level the right level, no smooth ride as valuable as a rough ride, no like interchangeable with as, and no ball game anything but chaotic if it lacks a mound, a box, bases, and foul lines. That’s what Strunk was about, that’s what I am about, and that (I hope) is what the book is about. Any attempt to tamper with this prickly design will get nobody nowhere fast.
Another thing that has disturbed me has nothing to do with you or Macmillan—it is that when I reread my piece on style, it left me with a cold feeling of having failed. I am reasonably well satisfied with the gist of it—that is, the advice, the reminders; but the introductory section not only failed to invigorate me but left me wondering whether a lot of it shouldn’t just come out of there. I would welcome your advice. I started the thing quite differently, in earlier drafts, and arrived much sooner at the main body of the piece.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
P.S. When I said, above, that Macmillan would have to take me in my bare skin, I really meant my bare as.
• The chapter White wrote in The Elements of Style called “An Approach to Style” contains some remarks on the question of when to omit “that” from a sentence. White advises students to be guided by their ear, and he had originally invented a sentence to illustrate his point: “He felt that the girl had not played fair.” Here, said White, is an instance where one’s ear is a help. “Omit the that and you have, ‘He felt the girl . . .’”
Jack Case found this too racy for classroom use and asked White to substitute something else. White did, but not without entering a plea for “that girl on P. 81.”
To J. G. CASE
[North Brooklin, Maine]
[December 1958]
Thursday
Dear Mr. Case:
Here is Chapter V, with the fixes, giving each Reminder a heading. I had to do a bit of rewriting here and there. . . .
As for the controversial matter of that girl on P. 81, I am in favor of leaving her in. She illustrates the embarrassments of prose, and she will be missed if you dismiss her. But I’ll not make a fuss about it if you are sure you want to make the cut. I thought of two sentences that would make a substitute:
He felt the fur was too costly.
He saw the light was off.
They are pale by comparison to my girl, whom I am beginning to admire for her pluck, but you may have them if you want them. They won’t create a disturbance in class. (That may be one trouble with classrooms nowadays—no disturbance, all down the line.) My reason for believing that this girl is in good taste and would not be an embarrassment is that she is presented as an embarrassment. And anything that is presented as an embarrassment is not likely to prove embarrassing, just as anything that is presented as funny or interesting is not likely to be f. or i.
This girl should have me for her lawyer.
Yrs for the iron word and the
felt girl,
E. B. White
To STANLEY HART WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
15 January [1959?]
Dear Bun:
Your man Vrest Orton,1 who will probably end up in a vrest home, came through again at Christmas, and we have had some nice pancakes and other tasties, thanks to you and Blanche. I think the space age version of the country store, with its crackerbarrel literature and old horehound candy decor, is one of the finest manifestations of this sad day of wistfulness and remembrance of things past. And I guess old Vresty is lining his pockets pretty nicely, too. We occasionally send him an order for deerskin gloves and a bag or two of stone-ground meal. I don’t know what he has for a stone, there, but you can probably grind meal satisfactorily with an enormous plastic cylinder studded with rhinestones, if you go about it right. And I have an idea Vresty Orton goes about things right.
The spiders in your basement may have thinned out because of bug spray, but I doubt it. Spiders are tough, and nothing much bothers them (except an occasional writer), but I have discovered that the spider population in my barn cellar and my outbuildings varies greatly from year to year. I don’t know why, but
my guess is weather conditions at the time of hatching. Like almost every other creature in the arachnid and insect world, they throw a lot of eggs around, and just hope.
Marion went into the Bridgeport hospital last week for tests, following a spell of jaundice, and the latest report is that she may have an operation. I am in touch with Jessie, who is standing by.
I do not want a child’s crib in good, or bad, condition. Two children (Joe’s) are going to be staying with us next week, but both of them would laugh a crib out of business.
Yrs,
En
To J. G. CASE
North Brooklin, Maine
19 January 1959
Dear Mr. Case:
I have marked one copy of your report, and my marks will answer your questions, I think, except for the ones I have left for this letter. . . .
Page 39, first sentence. Your fix is acceptable to me, but I have suggested another way that may be better.
Page 45. I still like my horse, and see no harm in him—he neither bites nor kicks, being clever.1 But I shall not stand in your way if you will kill a horse. I merely warn you that animals, somehow or other, creep into my work—animals and occasionally girls—and if you eliminate them, you are running the risk of being left with nothing of any substance. . . .
Pages 80–81. Take this fine girl away and bring on Queen Elizabeth. I am now madly in love with the girl, and will do everything I can to protect her—which starts with keeping her out of a textbook.
Page 88, line 2–4. If you object to cinch, change it to “easy matter” or something of that sort.2 But I don’t think there is anything confusing about the passage. I doubt that one person in a thousand would read “no cinch” and think of a horse’s girdle. You’ve read this piece so many times you are seeing horses. And I’ve read it so many times I’m seeing Death Valley.
Thanks again for the pleasant lunch at Booth’s Hall last week, and my best to Cloudman.3 Hope this letter and the enclosed report answers everything—I have been writing it while surrounded by grandchildren wielding Tinker Toy structural elements. They’ve got even more questions than you have. Shouldn’t a skyscraper have a windshield wiper? I had a quick answer for that one.
Yrs,
E. B. White
To STANLEY HART WHITE
N. Brooklin
[January 25, 1959]
Sunday
Dear Bun:
What year did I first go to Belgrade—do you know? I’m doing a railroad piece, or trying to.1 Seems to me it was 1904 or 1905. You and Al, as I recall it, had been the first of the family to visit Great Pond (as guests of somebody?) and Father got wondering about you, and followed along, didn’t he? I seem to remember that it all started with you and Al on the opposite shore of the lake, and that Father fell in love with the place, rented a camp (Happy Days?) and took all the family either that same summer or the following summer.
Do you remember the approximate running time of the Bar Harbor Express? My recollection is that it left Grand Central at 8 p.m. and arrived in Belgrade Station next morning at about 9 or 9:30. I can probably dig this information out from old time tables, if I get desperate. My hunch is that the New York—Belgrade run was about a thirteen hour trip in 1905, and now, half a century later, it is still about a thirteen hour trip.
Yrs in haste (am running for a train that no longer exists),
En
To JANICE WHITE
[North Brooklin, Maine]
June 16, 1959
Dear Jan:
Before I mark up the books (which have not arrived yet) I thought I’d better find out for sure what you wanted. Do you want me just to write my name, or should I indicate that the books are a memorial to Fran, presented by you?1 I want to be sure that I am properly carrying out your wishes. So will you drop me a note.
I had a fine letter from Stan not long ago and am delighted that he and Blanche have plumped for Denver, as it sounds as though it would agree with them fine. The business of stopping work, after almost a lifetime of it, is tough on many people, but I think Stan is going to feel it less than these old chairmen of the board—some of whom go into a state of shock when they no longer have any papers to ruffle about in the morning.
We are awaiting, breathlessly, an influx of grandchildren of assorted sizes. Joe’s wife is about to have her third, by Caesarian section in the Ellsworth hospital, and while she is out of the running we are taking Steven and Martha (age 5 and 4) into our house for a couple of weeks roistering with tinker-toys and space ships. And on top of that, we are also taking our oldest grandchild, Kitty Stableford, a blonde starlet age 15, who plans to attend a French school in the morning (21⁄2 miles away by bicycle) and clean up the space ships and bathe the space-tots in the afternoon. The piano is out of tune, my wife and one of my cows have diarrhea, the temperature outdoors is 48, the milk supply is contaminated with strontium 90 from fallout, rain has been falling ever since Memorial Day, our neighbor’s boy just held up the Sunday night Bible class with a .22 automatic pistol and abducted one of the girls in the minister’s automobile, the asparagus is growing down into the ground instead of up into the air, the lilacs look as though they will still be blooming right through the Fourth of July, and I have lost both pairs of glasses. Hope you are not the same.
Love,
Andy
P.S. Tell Stan I have a textbook out, on English usage and style, and will send him a copy. It explains everything.
To DOROTHY LOBRANO
North Brooklin, Maine
4 September 1959
Dear Dotty:
I’m delighted to add an albatross to the birds around here, and I look forward very much to reading Admiral Jameson’s book [Wandering Albatross]. Our house is groaning with fog-bound grandchildren at the moment, so I have got no further than a study of the courtship photographs. What wonderful pictures! The albatross appears to be second only to the Brooklin (Me.) square dancers in style, ecstasy, and movement.
Are you coming to Maine this year? This has been the summer of the great discontent and widespread confusion, weatherwise, healthwise, and otherwisewise. June gave us 27 days of fog and rain, three days of sun, and a new grandson named John Shepley White. It also gave me a stomach ache that lasted nine weeks, reduced me to 129 lbs. of plucky skin and bones, and landed me finally in Harkness (in the enema and witchcraft department). They photographed me from many bizarre angles, gave me a money-raising brochure to edit between waves of nausea, and sent me away on the morning of the ninth day. Am feeling better—why, I do not know. But am.
Joe is now a partner in the boat yard where he has been working. He looks great and loves the life, which is a fine blend of manual dexterity and cerebral dream. His oldest boy, Steven, begins school next week—an experience he is approaching with resolution and fortitude. The bus is bright yellow. When Joe started school here about 22 years ago, the bus was nonexistent and he took the 21⁄2 mile walk in his stride, which was firm.
K is pretty well but has to take periodic treatments (of a non-serious sort) at the Medical Center, so we come to town every six or eight weeks. We’ve been using the railroad, but the executives of the Maine Central plan to put a stop to that bit of nonsense. They have announced that railroading in Maine is at the threshold of a golden age, and that this age will begin just as quick as they can get rid of the last passenger—which they hope to do by mid-October. The last passenger, although they failed to mention this, is going to be me. And I am going to be put off the train kicking, screaming, and hurling oaths and stones. Golden age yet! I’ve had a bellyful of golden ages in this backsliding century. . . .
Love,
Andy
To LOUIS LEVY
[North Brooklin, Maine]
September 10, 1959
Dear Mr. Levy:
Thank you for your letter about “The Elements of Style.” I am glad you find it a good guidebook.
I think the expression “dress up” is a useful—certainly a familiar—collo
quialism. Little girls dress up when they go to a party, perhaps because their thoughts go upward. A man dresses for dinner; his thoughts are presumed to be under control, like his studs. If you place a hat, or a garland, on a horse, you dress the horse up. A sergeant, on the other hand, dresses a private down. These words up and down are amusing in themselves. Do you slow up, or do you slow down? Robert M. Coates once wrote a piece on this subject for The New Yorker, many years ago. I think your instructor in English at the University of Oklahoma was quite within his rights to advise you not to dress up anything. But I have granddaughters, and every once in a while I notice that they are dressing up. Way up.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To VIRGINIA BAILEY
[North Brooklin, Maine]
September 16, 1959
Dear Miss Bailey:
The dash didn’t get into the book, but it seems to get into my writing now and then—the way things do. As for three dots . . .
Everybody is confused about “I were,” but if I were you, I wouldn’t let it worry me. It belongs to the subjunctive mood.
I say eether, rather than eyether. But you can say anything that comes into your head, never forget that.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To HOWARD CUSHMAN
North Brooklin, Maine
26 October 1959
Dear Cush:
Being equipped with extra-sensory perception, I knew you had left West 4th Street, but I didn’t know it was Philadelphia until your letter arrived. I had a weekend in your city about a year ago, memorable for a stomach virus and the inability to order a drink on Sunday. I can’t say I am wild for the Rittenhouse Square Sabbath, but there is always the Schuylkill and those boat clubs. I advise you to learn to scull a single-oar shell, or maybe you and Jit1 could manage a longer one. (You could stroke her. Hup!) Am sending you three copies of the little book—the two you sent me and the one I was going to send you except I knew you had left West 4th Street. Every veteran of English 8 gets a copy for free.