Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  Otherwise we are well. I have my sinking spells and my panics, and for the most part fritter away my time with inconsequential matters and pails of water. But I [am] up and around, and thankful to be here still, and not Gone.

  Love and good cheer from us both.

  Andy

  • Dr. Edward Teller, of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley, California, had read White’s “Letter from the West,” dated June 4, in The New Yorker, and wrote White expressing his strong agreement with White’s views on the futility of disarmament and the critical need for a federation of free states.

  To EDWARD TELLER

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  January 2, 1961

  Dear Dr. Teller:

  I’m glad you liked my piece and I’m very pleased to have your letter. I would have answered sooner, but my grandchildren take Christmas seriously and I have been on trial.

  When I discussed weapons testing in the piece, I was thinking of tests in the atmosphere, and should have so stated. Like all laymen, I am always out of date when it comes to the devices of science. My argument for a test ban was based on the assumption that tests are made in the air and are large and dirty, which, of course, is no longer a good assumption. At any rate, I’m for keeping our military strength at peak capacity consistent with decent air to breathe, and if testing is necessary, I’m for testing.

  As for shelters, I used the hole-in-the-ground more as an illustration of negative, defensive thinking than as an undesirable thing in itself. I suppose a hole in the ground is indicated at this point, although temperamentally I am more inclined to take my last stand on the barn roof, where I can have a look around. Perhaps that’s because I have never been in combat, and so indulge myself in a spurious cockiness. Perhaps it’s because at my age I’d rather go out with a bang than a whimper. But I’d just as leave have some holes in the ground in America provided Americans don’t get the idea that that’s all we need, and that, once equipped, we can relax in peace. People tend to become preoccupied with anything that is tangible, immediate, and local—like a hole in the ground—and because of being preoccupied they lose sight of the main issue—the critical need for a political structure that embodies the perquisites of free government and that is supranational not just in intent but in design.

  Thanks again for your instructive and congenial letter.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To STANLEY HART WHITE

  North Brooklin

  27 January [1961]

  Dear Bun:

  Haven’t thanked you yet for the Voltaire, but have been using it daily—or nightly. It’s a little like sipping absinthe, which I tried once when I was young and could sip. (Now I just swallow gin and fall asleep.)

  I still remember with pleasure the contemptuous look on your face when I explained to you, a year ago in the barn cellar, that cow manure was beneficial to the soil. These things stay with me. We’ve had sub-zero nights lately, and the manure pile is like a volcano getting ready to erupt—steam rises from the tip, moistening the cobwebs above, which then freeze in beautiful lacework. Enchanting place, loaded with intimations of pneumonia.

  K has been ill since Christmas with a new disorder, as yet unexplained. She will enter the hospital on Feb. 4 (if I can find a way to get to New York over these roads) and will presumably have neurological tests. We’ve taken a house in Sarasota and bought rail tickets and made a lot of incidental arrangements, but these plans will blow up unless the doctor gives K the signal. Right now, life is about as disorderly as it can get; we’ve just had the grandchildren visiting us for a week, while Joe and Allene were away; and in the middle of that, I was hit with the flu and so was Henry, leaving no one to do the chores. We had a blinding blizzard on Inauguration Day, and the next morning the children remembered that they had left a large inflated rubber frog (with a beautiful yellow belly) down in the boathouse at the shore last summer. Grandfather and Steven were the ones to work their way down through the drifted snow and make the rescue. When we finally reached the boathouse, it looked like the wheelhouse of a dragger that has been at sea in the winter storm; the whole front of the building was iced up, and we had to chisel the doors out to free them. The horse’s name is Whitey and the frog’s name is Greeno, and they were glad to be carried up to the warm house. All subsequent parcheesi games were played on horseback, and Martha slept with Greeno.

  Despite her troubles, K is trying to write a garden piece for The New Yorker while packing a trunk. It is almost impossible to move from one room to another in the house because of the accumulation of seed catalogues. Spring, if it ever comes, will be quite acceptable to me.

  Yrs,

  En

  To KELLOGG SMITH

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  February 3, 1961

  Dear Mr. Smith:

  I doubt that a Society is what is needed to preserve the language. The Society might easily become rigid, arbitrary, and generally objectionable—like the movie’s Board of Morals, which encourages the most degrading and immoral films. Language is a matter of taste, and I think what is lacking today is discipline—in the home, the kindergarten, the college, the studios, everywhere.

  I have no idea how one encourages a return to taste and discipline. Sorry I can’t give you more support. A bureau of weights and measures is useful because it deals with something that is exact and static. A Society of Correct Language seems to me unpromising, the language being fluid and the servant of whim and fancy.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To PATRICIA NOSHER

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [Early Spring, 1961]

  Wednesday

  Dear Pat:

  . . . We had six inches of rain here last Saturday, and the coon hole began taking water. The coon declared it a disaster area at about 8 o’clock in the morning. She moved her four kittens, one by one, down the tree and across the road, stowing them under the floor of Art Waldron’s workshop. (He’s a potter, and a very noisy one.) Monday morning, tiring of life under a ceramist, the coon moved her babies back again, against fantastic odds. On each trip, from the time she left the tree to her return with a kitten in her mouth, her elapsed time was eight minutes.

  Yrs,

  EBW

  • White’s reminiscences about his trip to Alaska aboard the S.S. Buford in 1923 appeared in the March 25, 1961, issue of The New Yorker, under the heading “Letter (Delayed) from the North.” White heard from several readers who also remembered the Buford.

  To MRS. CHAFFEE E. HALL, JR.

  [New York]

  April 17, 1961

  Dear Mrs. Hall:

  If your parental home in Kodiak was where Captain Lane was that night, the hospitality must have been warm, because he didn’t get back till all hours. I was much interested to read your long reminiscent account of your Alaska days, and I’m glad you found some old friends among the characters in my own memoir. I did not know that Louis Lane ended as a bay pilot, or that he died while deer-hunting. (I think he would have preferred to die hunting the polar bear.)

  My only regret about the Buford trip is that it gave me no real experience of Alaska itself. I do retain a very strong recollection of Kodiak—the night was rainy and cold and foggy, the kind of cold that really penetrates. I remember a skiff coming alongside, with some ragged, half naked children standing in it. They seemed perfectly impervious to the cold and the wet, as though this might be one of the balmiest nights of the year, which, for all I know, it was. . . .

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To DORCY COLE STEVENS

  [New York]

  April 17, 1961

  Dear Miss Stevens:

  I keep learning new things about the Buford, and your letter was very informative. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the cook went berserk and jumped overboard—the smell of the main galley made death seem wonderfully desirable.

  As for bathing, I think I must have taken
a bath or two during my elegant stage, the first six days. But I never remember bathing after that, and probably decided that since the men I was serving were dirty, a certain amount of personal encrustation was the thing.

  Thanks for writing—I’m glad you enjoyed the piece.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To B. W. HUEBSCH

  25 West 43rd Street

  April 17, 1961

  Dear Mr. Huebsch:

  Thanks for your letter about the Buford. Several people have written in, reminding me that I was preceded on board by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, but although I love anarchists I doubt that I shall try to write anything about that earlier voyage.1 One reason I like anarchists so much is that Ross once lent me Emma’s autobiography—a fabulously funny book. Do you remember how they tunneled day after day, from a secret place outside the walls of a Pennsylvania jail, to release one of their boys (it might have been Berkman himself), and when they finally surfaced, they were right in the middle of the prison yard? Anarchists have a true simplicity of mind: a low-powered bomb planted in a room with a high-powered capitalist, and poof!—the good society. I wish I owned the book. (But it was in two volumes, and even Ross didn’t own it—probably belonged to Charles MacArthur.)

  I’ll pass your suggestion along, in case The New Yorker might want to revive the deportations story. Many thanks for writing.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To MRS. DOROTHY W. SANBORN

  [New York]

  April 18, 1961

  Dear Mrs. Sanborn:

  The ending of “Stuart Little” has plagued me, not because I think there is anything wrong with it but because children seem to insist on having life neatly packaged. The final chapters were written many years after the early chapters and I think this did affect the narrative to some extent. I was sick and was under the impression that I had only a short time to live, and so I may have brought the story to a more abrupt close than I would have under different circumstances.

  My reason (if indeed I had any) for leaving Stuart in the midst of his quest was to indicate that questing is more important than finding, and a journey is more important than the mere arrival at a destination. This is too large an idea for young children to grasp, but I threw it to them anyway. They’ll catch up with it eventually. Margalo, I suppose, represents what we all search for, all our days, and never quite find.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  • Late in March, White had written a letter to a little girl named Cathy Durham, in answer to one from her asking why he hadn’t produced another book for children. His letter said: “Dear Cathy, I would like to write another book for children but I spend all my spare time just answering the letters I get from children about the books I have already written. So it looks like a hopeless situation unless you can start a movement in America called ‘Don’t write to E. B. White until he produces another book.’” This letter apparently offended Cathy Durham’s librarian, who returned it to White with a note taking him to task for cruelty. His reply follows.

  Eventually, letters from children arrived in such numbers that White found it impossible to keep abreast of his mail. Later, his publisher supplied a printed folder containing a “letter from the author” that is sent to every child who writes.

  To MISS B——

  North Brooklin, Maine

  May 7, 1961

  Dear Miss B——

  I’m sorry this letter has been put off so long, but there has been serious illness in my family and I have let things slide in consequence.

  I was surprised when my letter to Cathy Durham was returned to me by you. Of the thousands of letters I have written to children, it’s the only one that has bounced, and I don’t feel quite sure what happened. I assume you were disinclined to exhibit it, but I think the letter belongs to Cathy and if you’ll send me her address I’ll return it—she might like to have it about twenty years from now when she can fully understand what it is all about.

  Cathy, as I recall it, asked me why I had not written another book for children, so I told her. (I don’t always tell the exact, whole truth to children, but my tendency is to do just that.) Then I made what I considered was a little joke: I suggested a movement in America called “Don’t write to E. B. White until he produces another book.” In all this I see nothing ungracious or cruel. I do see that I raised a question that should be of interest to librarians and school teachers, namely, should they, in their zeal to put children in touch with books, also attempt to put them in touch with the authors?

  The practice of having youngsters write to authors is now widespread. It is an innocent, and perhaps laudable, diversion; but it has arithmetical consequences that teachers and librarians seem unaware of. The author is hopelessly outnumbered. You, as a librarian, tend to think of your exhibit as an isolated case, but it is one of thousands. The result is the author is swamped with mail. Letters now come to me faster than I can answer them. Many of the letters contain requests—for an autograph, for a dust jacket, for an explanation, for a photograph. This to me presents a real problem. I have no secretary here at home, and if I am to deal with my mail I must do it myself; if I am to mail a book I must find the wrapping paper, the string, the energy, the right amount of stamps, and take the parcel to the post office up the road. This can occupy a whole morning, and often does.

  I haven’t solved this problem and don’t really know what I shall do. I may give up answering letters, or, as some writers do, throw them back on the publisher—which seems to me evasive and unsatisfying.

  About four years ago, I had an idea for a story for children. It seemed like such a pleasant idea that I spent my spare time for several weeks doing research and making notes—the raw material of a book. I put everything in a folder and there it still lies, awaiting a spell when I feel enough caught up with life to tackle the writing. Every once in a while I take this folder out and examine it, hungrily. But then I look at my desk where the unanswered letters and the undone things lie in accusing piles, and I stick the folder back in its corner.

  When I was a child, I liked books, but an author to me was a mythical being. I never dreamed of getting in touch with one, and no teacher ever suggested that I do so. The book was the thing, not the man behind the book. I’m not at all sure that this separation of author and reader isn’t a sound idea, although there are plenty of teachers and plenty of writers who would disagree. It is somewhat a matter of temperament, I guess. A lot of writers thrive on a rich diet of adulation and inquiry and contact; they like to read from their works, sign their name on flyleafs, and take tea. Other writers are very anxious to do anything that will promote the sale of their book, and they spend much time and energy fanning any spark of public interest. As for me, as soon as I get a book out of my system, I like to forget about it and get on with something else. So in the long run, although I’m not immune to praise and to friendliness, I get impatient with the morning mail, because it is, in a sense, my enemy—the thing that stands between me and a final burst of creative effort. (I’m sixty-one and am working against time.)

  Margaret Mitchell once remarked: “It is a full-time job to be the author of ‘Gone With the Wind.’” This remark greatly impressed me, as being an admission of defeat, American style. (Miss Mitchell, incidentally, was not overstating the matter—she never produced another book.) I don’t want being the author of “Charlotte’s Web” to be a full-time job or even a part-time job. It seems to me that being an author is a silly way to spend one’s day.

  If I caused Cathy any uneasiness by telling her a literary truth that is perhaps beyond her immediate comprehension, I am indeed sorry. But the letter, I think, properly belonged in your exhibit and you should have boldly stuck it on the wall, where it might have stirred the interest of visitors concerned with school and library practice.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  • Arthur Zegart’s efforts to promote the producti
on of a live movie version of Charlotte had come to naught, and Louis de Rochemont had revived his proposal for an animated version.

  To LOUIS DE ROCHEMONT

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  28 June 1961

  Dear Mr. de Rochemont:

  Here is the letter I threatened to write. I’ll try to keep it from turning into a trilogy.

  While animation is a perfect device for satire, Charlotte’s Web is not really a satire. It has a thread of fantasy, but essentially it is a hymn to the barn. It is pastoral, seasonal, and is concerned with ordinary people in, for the most part, ordinary situations. The heroine dies, the summer ends, and when the story comes to a close the girl, Fern, is a different girl—she has matured a little. Her interest has shifted from the barnyard animals to a boy who gives her a ride on the Ferris wheel.

  Because of this, it has occurred to me that the book, if handled with imagination, might make a motion picture in live action—real girl, real barn, real creatures. A good deal of the action in the book would present no problem whatever to the camera. . . . And then there are the parts that are out of the question for the camera and that would need an assist from the drawing board. The critical problem would be to arrive at a smooth transition between live scenes and animated scenes. If this problem can be solved at all, I believe the key lies in narration—in particular, narration by Fern herself.

  Fern, in the story, often runs home and tells her mother about the goings-on in the barn cellar. Her mother is uneasy about the whole business and she presses Fern for details. In a film, this happy accident could be greatly useful. Fern could even turn out to be something of a sketch artist, and, when grilled, could draw pictures for her mother showing what the barn cellar crowd looks like—the spider, the rat, the pig. These rough sketches of hers would be the germ of the animated characters, and the action could then go quickly from narration to dramatic animation. The most difficult scenes in the book would thus be presented in retrospect and in animation—as recaptured by the little girl. . . . The thing that would make the real spider interchangeable with the drawing-board spider, the real pig with the drawing-board pig, would be the voice—always the same, and unmistakable. . . .