Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  Life as a textbook editor is not the rosy dream you laymen think it is. I get the gaa damndest letters every day from outraged precisionists and comma snatchers, complaining every inch of the way. They are out to get my colon, just the way your doctor was. I shall soon turn on these hungry hordes and let ’em have it. Still and all, I am glad I revived the little book, and so is Emilie Strunk, widow of Will, now in her 80’s and living alone in Meriden, Conn. It is a 50-50 deal, on royalties, but I gather that some of my sniveling Cornellians are under the impression that I am pocketing the entire loot. Emilie writes me comical little letters that are on the border between senility and agility. Have also heard from Willie’s brother in Cincinnati, and from Oliver. My favorite review, so far, was by a bearded columnist in Peterboro, Ontario, who offered the opinion that everything I write sounds as though I were just going to bed with a hard cold. I snapped a post card right back, saying, “Hard cold nothing. This is cholera.”

  K and I were interested in your remarks about the Ross book,2 as the book has been the cause of much sorrow and pain around the shop. The first couple chapters are pretty good—Jim could always reproduce Ross’s mannerisms and general demeanor, and vividly. But most of the book seems to me, and to K, a sly exercise in denigration, beautifully concealed in words of sweetness and love. As soon as Jim got famous and successful—which was very soon—he began brooding about the low pay he had received for his early casuals. And then he remembered that some of his pieces had been rejected, and this was an insult to genius. Curiously enough, it was in England, where Jim has been lionized in a big way, that the sharpest reviews appeared. To see England fallen so low threw Jim into a deep depression, from which he has just begun to recover.

  I liked the Muggeridge review, by and large. (I had seen it, but thanks, anyway.) Muggeridge had the great advantage of having once edited an adult comic weekly and also of having known Ross.

  I gave birth to a fine new grandson (John Shepley White) last June. Except for this pleasant event, my summer was a dud. . . . Have lost ten pounds in the melee, and you wouldn’t know me, or want to. Am pale, wan, and ugly, and I don’t want you to remind me that digestion is the better part of pallor, either.

  The really sad news about the sad, sad summer is that my oldest sister Marion was hospitalized with cancer. She died about ten days ago, in Bridgeport, and is the first of the six of us to depart these shores. I think likely you never met her (Mrs. Arthur Brittingham). She was a red head, and a fine, gentle woman.

  I’m probably going to be in town for the first couple weeks in November, staying at the Algonk. If you get over, drop into my 43 St digs or the hotel and we’ll lift one to Gunsight Pass. (On an empty stomach, natch.)

  Yrs,

  Andy

  XII

  LETTERS FROM THE EAST

  1960–1965

  * * *

  • The years from 1960 through 1965 were difficult ones for the Whites. Katharine was ill for much of the time, first with a carotid block, which required surgery, then with another arterial condition for which she barely managed to avoid surgery, “by strength of character,” as White puts it. She then contracted a rare skin disease, which put her in the hospital for long stretches, and the treatment for which—massive doses of cortisone—left her a semi-invalid.

  White continued to write, primarily Letters from the East for The New Yorker. He also collected a number of his “Letter” pieces in The Points of My Compass, which Harper’s published in 1962. An E. B. White Reader, edited with commentary and questions by William W. Watt and Robert W. Bradford of Lafayette College, was put together by Harper’s College Department.

  To JOHN KIERAN

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  14 January 1960

  Dear Mr. Kieran:

  I’ve been sick and during this time your book on the natural history of New York has been a great resource and pleasure to me and I want to thank you for it. I am no naturalist, and you had me on the ropes most of the way, but I enjoyed it. In a general sort of way I am pro nature and pro New York, and you mingled them so beautifully. I have seldom seen a semi-popular book with such an array of classical and scientific information in such good order. Even with your great knowledge of birds and beasts and flowers, it is obvious that you did your homework, not to mention your proofreading.

  You come through very clear, poking a warbler’s nest and having a mouse jump out, catching a snapping turtle in the act while boys poke her with sticks, hearing the thud of a flying squirrel while sitting on a verandah. I think I made only one visit to the little swamp next to the lake in Van Cortlandt, but its wildness lingers in my mind—the dampness of the world, the redwing, the wren, the turtle, the cattail (or, as we say in Maine, cacktail). I despair of a society that is trying to drain all swamps and make them into airfields, but maybe I am in a despairing mood.

  Today we had a delegation of Evening Grosbeaks, along with regular customers—the Black Capped Chickadees (there is a brown cap offbeat chickadee around the place but I haven’t seen him yet). Last week, I had the great pleasure of a visit from the Whiskey Jack, who hung around the back porch for almost an hour, looking for a handout. And two Sundays ago, the Pileated came to the big Balm o’ Gilead tree in front of the house and spent a couple of hours remodelling it according to ideas of its own. This tree is as hollow as a soil-pipe, and every spring a raccoon female ascends 30 feet and has her kittens in a big hole. The Pileated didn’t like this hole—wrong dimensions. But the hole has two vents, higher up, on the north side, and the woodpecker, in his red toboggan cap, spent the morning enlarging the topmost hole—probably to make a convenient roosting spot in bad weather—then took fright and has not been seen since.

  I don’t know whether you have ever seen Turtle Bay Garden—a friend of mine once described it as “that decadent close.” I was lucky enough to have a bedroom overlooking it for many years. It is between the Emerald Saloon and the United Nations, and it attracts birds because it has running water and good cover. Every spring and fall, I found the chewink, the brown thrasher, the hermit thrush, the white-throat, the robin, and several warblers. And twice I saw the ruby-crowned kinglet, vying with the Emerald. How wonderful it is. And excuse this letter. And don’t answer.

  E. B. White

  To ROBERT S. BABCOCK

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  February 5, 1960

  Dear Governor Babcock:

  It’s always fun finding out what happens to readers, and I am glad one of them recovered sufficiently to become lieutenant governor of a very pretty state [Vermont]. Morris Bishop was right, I do get discouraged, but letters like yours cheer me on. Am very grateful to you for taking the trouble to write and for the things you said.

  I’d rather have a political man interested in the wild flag than any other kind of man, because it is, after all, essentially a political matter. I fear that some of my early remarks on the subject were more feverish than wise, and when I reread them, I am appalled at my youthful assurance. That flag won’t wave during my lifetime, but I guess it’s made of good material and will at some future time catch the rays of the sun, assuming we don’t put out the sun meantime by bouncing things off it.

  Thanks again for your encouraging letter. I am proud to have it.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To FAITH MC NULTY MARTIN

  Sarasota, Florida

  Wash Birth [1960]

  Dear Faith:

  Am sitting here with the Gulf of Mexico lapping at my entrails, doing newsbreaks. This one made me laugh but I am sending it back to Rhode Island. If Hoyland Bettinger is a real man who went off a real cliff, we shouldn’t use the break. If, on the other hand, Emil White and Patricia Roberts are a couple of beatniks working the humor beat, I still don’t want it. How sad that I cannot use this break from you, Faith McNulty, sender of some of the best newsbreaks!

  I have one nice break in this batch, though, and will tell you about it.

 
; “A French horse player, he appeared with the orchestra at its recent Carnegie Hall Concert.”

  Tagline: But his thoughts were far away.

  Love,

  Andy

  To CASS CANFIELD

  North Brooklin, Maine

  14 June [1960]

  Dear Cass:

  Thanks for your friendly note about my gold medal.1 It’s too big to wear and too small to roll like a hoop.

  One of these days, if I can escape long enough from the barium sulphate crowd, I’d like to bundle a few of my essays up and send them to you to make a book. Be patient, and be on the watch.

  Yrs faithfully,

  Andy

  P.S. Shame on you for letting John Updike get away from you. That shook my confidence in Harper, publishers since 1817 and old enough to know better.

  To DOROTHY LOBRANO

  North Brooklin, Maine

  June 14 [1960]

  Dear Dotty:

  I’m terribly late in thanking you for the very funny letter about that Ceremonial.1 I was in town last week, and planned to call instead of writing, but that got loused up, too—as I spent all my time posing in the nude for the Harkness X-ray crowd and couldn’t seem to muster strength to lift the receiver at day’s end.

  Anyway, it was fine of you to give me such a good report of the litry doings on West 155th Street. It’s just as well I wasn’t on hand for the occasion, as Mailer would undoubtedly have scored a direct hit and it would have got in the papers.2 MEDALIST STOPS GLASS HURLED BY MALCONTENT. Incidentally, where does a man keep a gold medal? This one just makes me uneasy. I tried it in a bottom drawer and it seemed needlessly obscure. I tried it on the table in the hall and it seemed ostentatious. Maybe I’ll have to build a trophy room, like the ones you see on “Person to Person,” but that would mean throwing out a wing and I’d have to melt down the gold to pay for the addition. I see no solution to medals and don’t really enjoy them. Medals should be edible, so you could get it over with and have a moment of enjoyment. I will gladly give you this medal if you need something round and yellow. After all, you’re my godchild and so far I’ve not given you so much as a licorice drop, which is the kind of godfather I’ve turned out to be. But I love you. . . .

  K has reduced her job at the magazine to a six-months-a-year stint—which I will believe when I see it. (My hunch is she will work twelve months as usual, and get paid for six.) Her flower gardening life is at fever pitch now, and our perennial borders are works of art—cars slow down as they go by, to see the wonders Katharine has wrought. We used to employ one man on the place, but now that K has learned the Latin names of plants, it takes three. But it’s a nice way to go broke, surrounded by such beauty. Joe is now a partner in the firm of Day and White—the Brooklin Boat Shop. They have acquired the property where the boatyard is, and in doing so also acquired a fish factory. They haven’t decided what to do with the fish factory, but I imagine you can just own a fish factory, the way you own a cocker spaniel. Joe’s wife is president of the PTA in Brooklin and is the mother of three—Steven 6, Martha 5, and John 1. They all put to sea in a boat Joe built, every chance they get, and I am the kind of grandfather who doesn’t dare ask whether the kids wear life jackets or not, and haven’t dared look.

  Thanks again for the letter, Dotty, and I’m awfully sorry I didn’t get a chance to get in touch with you last week. Please give my love to Jean and Sandy when you see them.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To DAISE TERRY

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [June 1960]

  By the sea

  Tuesday

  Dear Miss Terry:

  Now that you’ve joined the gay crowd on the 20th floor, I’ve decided that my small residual affairs at the magazine should be concentrated all in one heap, in order to simplify matters. This can best be done, I think, by having everything—phone calls, mail, breaks, etc.—go to K’s secretary, Miss Nosher. She is in almost daily touch with Katharine, and this is an advantage to me because I can slip in a request or answer a question without having to write a letter or make a separate long distance call. Also, her whole job is to be a secretary, whereas your whole job is just a little short of God’s, only you work longer hours than God and do better work. I have talked this over with K and with Milton and I would have gone into a huddle with you about it while I was in New York, but so help me every time I tried to do it, something came up, like Jap Gude—who took me to a puppet studio on Barrow Street where I rode up in an elevator that had sleighbells in it. As Ross would say, that’s my life. (Incidentally, I wish you would get Fleischmann to put sleighbells in those new elevators of ours, right in front of the electric eye.). . .

  Things are hopping here this morning by the sea, and I wish you were here to take charge—a new disease on the raspberries caused by the wrong mulch, sonic booms rattling the henhouse windows and throwing the ovulation out of whack, no beauty parlor appointment available until next Monday, rats in the cesspool, mealy bugs in the begonias, worms in the radishes, and a fine blue sky over all, wind northeast and gentle. This is the place to be if you can take it. When you come to visit, remind me to show you a warbler’s nest made of fox hair. And other interesting sights. I have now had four (4) barium enemas, and the score is even—two positive, two negative. The doctors are fighting it out among themselves, and they can have it.

  Yr overexposed friend,

  EBW

  To PATRICIA NOSHER

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [November 1960]

  Friday

  Dear Pat:

  . . . Thanks for that [Herblock] cartoon showing the way I looked on Election Night. The only thing wrong in it is the coffee pot. I went off coffee and onto Scotch when Kennedy’s early lead began to dwindle. Then around 2:30, I went off Scotch onto milk. Then back to Scotch at bedtime (ten minutes of four). I think there was a short, early interval of brandy and Benedictine, as a gesture to that little town in New Hampshire that knows its own mind and went 9–0 for Nixon. Anyway, I hope you got through the night better than I did. The next presidential race will have to have a Gabor sister as one contender, to keep me up after 11:00.

  Yrs,

  EBW

  • The Whites’ interest in John Updike developed early in his writing career, when Katharine saw in him a promising new talent. This letter was occasioned by a fan letter from Mr. Humphrey Fry, a reader who had written to White on the mistaken assumption that he was the author of a New Yorker Comment written by Updike.

  To JOHN UPDIKE

  [New York]

  28 November [1960]

  Dear John:

  An aging novelist is going to send you his novel. I liked that comment, too. Its being written by a young sprig, instead of by me, merely aggravates my own need for encouragement.

  Other things by you I have greatly enjoyed lately are the Marquand comment and the Ted Williams piece. Have not read “Rabbit” and doubt if I will. Your writing shakes me too much and I have not yet recovered from “The Poorhouse Fair,” which I read while occupying a beach cottage in Florida during violent floods and winds, and which made me shake all over the whole time.

  There are a few comforts of age: you’re going to have to write to Mr. Humphrey Fry, not me. I take comfort in that.

  Yrs,

  Andy White

  P.S. The Algonquin Hotel is on fire as I write this. I left my room there a few moments ago and found the fire department outside on the street. The Algonquin met this crisis as it meets all other problems of hotel management—with resourcefulness bordering on the eccentric. Instead of phoning in the alarm, it sent Mrs. Bodne (wife of the owner) and her daughter Barbara around the corner, to break the news to the firemen at the firehouse.

  To MORRIS BISHOP

  North Brooklin, Maine

  [January 2, 1961]

  Dear Morris:

  A pleasure to get your fine letter and the pretty view of Penn Yan.1 I am surprised that Mr. Keast found my reply
equivocal—I thought I was just declining his cordial invitation2 in a charming but positive way. Which doesn’t, of course, mean that I have no wish to revisit Ithaca. Those motorcycles of yours make it seem much closer and dearer somehow, and Katharine and I are counting on them when we come your way. She twisted her knee this morning while frying bacon, the only woman of my acquaintance ever to sustain this interesting accident, and a very lucky woman, too, as I managed to catch her as she was going down, and caught the bacon, too.

  By the way, if young Alison3 wants more than forty bats, I wish she would come here and remove the ones that cling to our kitchen chimney between the attic insulation and the roof. There is a metal filing cabinet just beneath them where our old bank statements are stored; it is getting hard to find the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company for the guano. I keep thinking the bats are rabid, too. A man has to have thoughts that he can turn over in his mind if he is to get through the days in this rather isolated region.

  We thank you and Old Alison for your delicious invitation. Today, for the first time in thirty-five years, K starts the year free of editorial duties—a Retired Person. I must say she looks a little as though she were entering Leavenworth. Although I’ve always been ready to bleed and die for the magazine, her own attachment to it has been much more solid, steadier than mine, and I think the breakup will be unsettling for a while.