Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  Dear Cass:

  I’m very much pleased that my book has been chosen to be part of the International White House Libraries. Thanks for letting me know about it. I had not heard of the program but am delighted to be associated with it through The Points of My Compass.

  We are in New York for a few days. Katharine came out of the hospital this morning, after taking some tests. There will probably be surgery, but the doctors think we can wait until fall, when the nights are cooler and the surgeons are not fly fishing.

  Best regards,

  E. B. White

  To DAVID BRADLEY

  [New York]

  July 22, 1963

  Dear Mr. Bradley:

  My apologies for being so late in replying to your letter. It was a most satisfying letter to receive, and I am always astonished to discover that my haphazard literary popsicles have found takers in places like Helsinki.1 High school students in America are something else again—once in a great while I get a really wonderful blast from one of them, taking me apart at the seams, which I love. Got one this winter from a young man in Miami who said that my Florida Key piece (written before he was born) showed a complete misconception of Florida and an utter disregard of simple facts.

  Many thanks for your report, and best regards.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  • “The Door,” probably the most widely reprinted of White’s pieces, ran in The New Yorker, March 25, 1939. Some twenty years later, William R. Steinhoff, chairman of freshman English at the University of Michigan, decided to track down, if he could, White’s sources for the queer omelette he had put together: the experiments with the rats, the washable house, the poet (deceased), the man out in Jersey who began taking his house down brick by brick, the prefrontal lobotomy. Steinhoff succeeded in tracing everything to real events and people. He reported this detective work in an article about “The Door,” published in College English, December 1961. “It is good to remember,” he wrote, “that as a work of art Mr. White’s story has its own sort of victory, art’s recurrent though never final conquest of the seemingly irrelevant and disorderly flux of human experience.”

  For several years after its publication, White felt disinclined to have the piece reprinted. Eventually, requests became frequent and he overcame his reluctance. The story has appeared in dozens of textbooks and anthologies, baffling many a freshman and cheering many a neurotic.

  To ROBERT L. DE LONG, JR.

  [New York]

  July 22, 1963

  Dear Mr. DeLong:

  I’m very far behind in my correspondence and am not even sure whether your letter got an answer or not.

  If there is any specific symbolism in “The Door” I am not aware of it. Religion was not in my mind when I wrote it, and you are quite wrong when you interpret the piece to mean that religion “does not answer the big questions of existence.”

  Few readers seem to realize that “The Door” is a somewhat factual piece. The New Yorker had sent me to write a report of an exhibit in Rockefeller Center—some sort of house that had unusual materials and features. I was feeling bad and I had a fever. When I came back to the office, instead of writing a straight piece, I wrote a dizzy one. You asked what the last paragraph meant. I think it mentions stepping out onto the street and the street comes up to meet the man’s foot. That’s what happened to me.

  The rats in the piece had appeared in an article in Life, and I happened to have it—among many other odd items—on my desk at the time. A lot of things got thrown in as I went along.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To FRANK SULLIVAN

  North Brooklin

  28 Aug. 1963

  Dear Frank:

  . . . K and I were sorry to hear about your pneumonia, but applauded your decision to stay home. In a hospital you would just get salmonella from the eggs, or staph from the insanitary condition of the pantry. I’m damn glad you didn’t have the real honest-to-God pneumonia, which I was visited with about ten years ago. It took me one afternoon between four and five o’clock. My doctor fed me a few terramycin pills and said he didn’t think it could be pneumonia because I wasn’t weak enough for that. Just before I died, they put me on a train for New York (we still had trains in those gaudy days) and I spent the night in an upper, swigging aspirin and White Rock. There was no room at the inn when I reached Harkness, so I was bundled over to Neurological, across the way. I didn’t much care where I was because I was dying anyway, but I remember feeling sorry for myself about dying, as I dearly love life, and I started to cry. Next day they ordered me out of bed and into my clothes, and they loaded me into a wheel chair and stuck my felt hat on my head and wrapped a grey blanket around me and at the last moment the nurse grabbed up the one bunch of flowers that had arrived and placed these carefully on my chest, and an orderly appeared and we began the long hot, lonely underground journey through the tunnel under Fort Washington Avenue. This tunnel follows the same route as the steam pipes, and the temperature down there was even higher than my own, which was around 104. I steadied the flowers so they didn’t fall off, but I felt pretty wispy just the same. In Harkness, they switched me from terramycin to acromycin, gave me a blonde nurse who complained that I didn’t shave my armpits, and here I am.. . . .

  Right now we have Roger and his two teen-age daughters visiting us, which, to put it mildly, enlivens the scene. For scene read bathroom. Roger and his wife were divorced a few weeks ago, and this has been an added touch of gloom for K. The girls are old enough to feel the breakup very deeply, and on that account they have not been easy visitors, albeit merry by times.

  Much love from us both,

  Andy

  P.S. I had a very fine dream last night. A friend flew over in a small plane and seeing me on the lawn reached out and shook hands, the plane being still airborne. Then he said he guessed he’d hop out and stay awhile and that the plane would go home by itself and his wife would fly it back later. I took him in the house for drinks, but found General Eisenhower occupying an upstairs room, where he was having a prostate operation by a local physician. The General was not anesthetized and was directing every move himself. Can’t tell you whether that nifty little plane got back because I soon left the land of Nod. Hope your dreams are happy ones like mine.

  • John Updike’s dedication of his volume of poems, Telephone Poles, to Katharine and E. B. White inspired the following letter.

  To JOHN UPDIKE

  3 Sept. 1963 Parked outside

  Blue Hill Hospital, waiting for

  KSW to emerge

  Dear Updike (John)

  In youth, when I was the creator,

  I was a lusty dedicator;

  But now, the blood all drained from me,

  At last I rise a dedicatee

  (All thanks to thee.)

  Katharine and I were surprised and very pleased to turn up at the head of your telephone poles. It was kind of you to admit us to this fine book, and I’ve been reading and re-reading the poems with an extra pleasure and satisfaction. I particularly love “The Great Scarf of Birds,” “Mosquito,” and the Castro-Hemingway. Our bird scarf here is formed of cowbirds—those wicked little feathered friends who are a living testimonial to shiftlessness, irresponsibility, and promiscuity. My pasture is their pool hall, and their sudden flight is as you described in the starling poem.

  Did I ever tell you that my first book, “The Lady Is Cold” (1929), was dedicated (I thought) to my mother. Turned out I didn’t even know her name. I thought it was Janet Hart White, but it was really Jessie. That’s how I started my dedicatory days.

  Thanks again for “Poles.” There’s only one line in the book I don’t care for. It’s on the last page. “John Updike was born in 1932.” This, considering the body of your work, I thought offensive and in bad taste.

  Yrs,

  Andy White

  To JOHN OSBORNE

  [New York]

  September 26, 1963

/>   Dear Mr. Osborne:

  Fowler has a long and spicy section about the word “one,” including a distinction between the impersonal “one” and what he calls the “false” or “fraudulent” first-personal “one,” which (he says) is employed by journalists who hope to be both personal and impersonal at the same time. As for me, I try to avoid the impersonal “one” but have discovered that it is like a face you keep encountering in the streets and can’t always avoid bowing to.

  I don’t remember whether Strunk had any rule about its being followed by “he.” Fowler finds a difference between “One hates his enemies” and “One hates one’s enemies.” But I don’t know that that answers your question.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To STANLEY HART WHITE

  25 West 43

  September 27 [1963]

  Dear Stan:

  Sometimes I get letters written here just because there is nothing else for me to do in this office anymore except sit around and think about all the things I’ve ever known. I feel better if I make the sound of a typewriter.

  We came to town last week so K could settle a few matters with the clowns at the Medical Center. Her first interview elicited the fact that no surgery is called for at the moment, and this is a relief. . . .

  Your life, as reported in your letter written in Santa Fe, sounds relatively spirited and adventurous compared with mine, and I’m glad you are moving around with such vigor. I’ll gladly give you the Southwest, though—I don’t believe I would ever develop a taste for it, however spectacular it is. (Once I saw it from a train window and was surprised that I felt no desire to get off the train.) I would like to see Seattle again, even though I suspect it would be unrecognizable. Nineteen twenty-three was my experience of Seattle.

  New York is becoming lost among the enormous glass boxes that are its new buildings. With one or two exceptions there is nothing intrinsically good looking about them, and in clusters they are overpowering and debilitating. I suppose they look quite splashy if you are on the deck of an incoming liner, but I’m not. There’s something about these immaculate stone and glass surfaces that destroys all the street-level detail that used to be so much fun. I feel like a spider in a bathtub—can’t get my dragline anchored to anything. (I also walk into glass doors, and take the bruises.)

  The Moscow Circus is in town and I saw it the other night. It is a one-ring affair, utterly different in tone from Ringling’s extravaganza, very precise and beautiful, almost like ballet. See it if it comes to Denver. The ring curb is bolted to the floor, which enables the fiery little horses of the Cossacks to build up tremendous speed and zing. They go so fast they become almost horizontal, with their feet on the curb instead of on the ground. The bears are great and the clowning is as stylish as you’ll ever see. The whole business lacks the smell and the dust and the dung that we associate with our circuses (and that I’m fond of, too) but this is an entirely different medium. Even when they put a bantam rooster into orbit it’s different.

  We’ll probably start back home around the first, which is next week, to dig our potatoes and store the squashes in the attic among the bats. Then we’ll try to figure out how to get to Florida, where K’s troubles are somewhat modified by warm air and where her doctor thinks it is necessary, now, for her to be. Neither of us is nuts about Florida, but it was helpful last winter. I hope to see Lil before I leave town. Tell me about Clara, when you get the chance. And give my love to Blanche and Janice.

  Yrs,

  En

  • Judith W. Preusser is a stepdaughter of Conrad Wyvell, White’s nephew.

  To JUDITH W. PREUSSER

  North Brooklin, Maine

  10 November 1963

  Dear Judy:

  I feel honored that you have brought your problem to me, but I feel a little scared, too. I think I’m probably better equipped to help a lady whose shoe is caught in an escalator than one whose career is caught in a bind. I would have answered your letter sooner had it been plain sailing. At any rate, I’m very glad that you don’t regard your indecision as a crisis, but merely as a bother.

  You are the second drop-out in my family. Kitty Stableford, our oldest grandchild (my step-granddaughter), did a year in Barnard and then faded away in the middle of her sophomore year. She is now back at work, but in a smaller institution, near her home. Kitty is extremely pretty and also talented (she’s a biologist who has already done a lot of experimental work with mice at the Albert Einstein Medical School in New York). I don’t know, really, what happened. Her health had something to do with it but I guess it was just a state of mind that she got into—or a state of nerves.

  I did my dropping out after I graduated. I worked in job after job in New York, unhappy and ineffective, and finally chucked life’s race for a while, got into a Model T Ford, and headed west with another fellow who also felt disconsolate. I stayed “out” for about a year and a half and have never regretted a minute of it. I’m glad you are back at college, though, as I strongly believe in the health-giving quality of finishing what one begins.

  If you have no deep feeling for literature, and no burning desire to express yourself in writing, you are probably in the same boat with about seventy-five per cent of all the English majors in America, so I wouldn’t let it worry you too much. In my case, I majored in English partly because I didn’t know what else to do, but mostly because I did have a strong tendency to write. (I was a writing fool when I was eleven years old and have been tapering off ever since.) Because of this desire to write, I was one of the lucky ones. It ought to cheer you up, though, to know that my interest in the world’s great literature was woefully anemic; I got very little out of my courses, didn’t understand half of what I read, skimped wherever I could, did rather badly, and came away from Cornell without a solid education and have never got round to correcting this deficiency. Primarily, my interest was in journalism, and most of my life has been spent in that arena, tilting at the dragons and clowning with the clowns. Even at Cornell, most of my time was spent getting out the daily newspaper.

  I know just how you feel, Judy. Frustration is youth’s middle name, and you mustn’t worry too much about it. Eventually, things clarify themselves and life begins to divulge a steadier destination. In a way, our lives take form through a simple process of elimination: we discard what we don’t like, walk away from what fails to inspirit us. My first job was with the United Press, but I knew within half an hour that my heart was not in it and that I would never be any good at gathering straight news under great difficulties and with the clock always running out.

  Your majoring in English was no mistake, even though you do not become a critic or a publisher’s assistant or a playwright or a novelist. English and English literature are the rock bottom of our lives, no matter what we do, and we should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry. “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” I agree with Mr. Thoreau, himself a victim of youthful frustration. You seem to me a girl whose head is on straight and I don’t worry about you, whether you are majoring in English or in bingo. Joe, my son, majored in English for two years at Cornell, then realized that what he really liked was boats. He transferred to M.I.T., took a degree in Naval Architecture, and now owns and operates a boatyard in Brooklin—hauling, storing, repairing, and building boats. Keeps him busy 24 hours of the day, and keeps him outdoors, where he prefers to be.

  We’ve just had three great gales here and are still picking up the pieces and sawing up the fallen trees. Aunt K is not well, and there isn’t much the doctors can do for her, as her trouble is in her arteries.

  Thanks for your nice letter—I wish I could write you a better reply, but your question is essentially unanswerable, except by yourself, and you supplied the answer when you said you wanted to live fruitfully and honestly. If you truly want that, you will assuredly bear fruit and be an adornment to the orchard, wherever it turns out
to be.

  With love,

  Uncle Andy

  To FAITH MC NULTY MARTIN

  North Brooklin, Maine

  23 October [1963]

  18 November

  it takes me a long time to

  write a letter

  Dear Faith:

  I am pleased with the appearance of your mouse and think you lucky to have her.1 The question, of course, is whether your friend is Peromyscus maniculatus (Deer Mouse) or Peromyscus leocopus (White-footed Mouse). Until you know that, you are enveloped in mysticism and are really not free to talk at all—except to the mouse. My book (“Complete Field Guide to American Wildlife”) describes you as follows: “Beginners, especially in the Northeast, may find it impossible at times to distinguish the Deer Mouse from the White-footed Mouse. Be satisfied to call it a Peromyscus.” To me this is insulting. I don’t see why you should be told to content yourself with your ignorant condition. Neither do I see why, just because you live in the Northeastern section of the country, you are less capable of distinguishing between two kinds of mice.

  And now to a horrid confession. Not long ago I had a mouse visiting my desk at night. He came because I keep a small crock of water with a sponge in it next to my jar of pencils, and it was obvious that the mouse was visiting this convenient little spring, for a drink. The sponge is yellow plastic, and my mouse would leave his tiny turds in the tiny craters of the sponge. I tired of this after a while, but kept hoping I would catch a glimpse of my visitor. I didn’t, so I set a back-breaker trap, baiting it carefully with smoky bacon. Next morning the mouse lay there, his back broken, his eyes wide open, as though incredulous to the last. It was a Deer Mouse, very beautiful in death, and I could have slit my throat from remorse. But then I got wondering how prejudiced a man can get—why was I perfectly prepared to kill a house mouse but not a beautiful Deer Mouse with its soft white underbelly and white feet? I belong in Birmingham among the white supremacists.

  I took careful measurements:

  31⁄2 body

  31⁄2 tail—tail moderately hairy