Letters of E. B. White
Page 61
[Sarasota, Florida]
[March 1966]
Sunday
Dear Harriet:
In answer to your direct question, I wasn’t satisfied with “Stuart Little” on TV, but I didn’t expect to be. It came out about the way I figured it would. By the terms of my contract with NBC, I was entitled to see and approve the script. A year ago, they sent me a script; I edited it (very slightly, but with a few good fixes) and returned it to them with my approval. Weeks later, I was told that they lost or misplaced my copy of the script, with my revisions. Then, months later, a brand new script arrived, with the glad tidings that the whole thing was wrapped up anyway, so I never bothered to read it.
It is the fixed purpose of television and motion pictures to scrap the author, sink him without a trace, on the theory that he is incompetent, has never read his own stuff, is not responsible for anything he ever wrote, and wouldn’t know what to do about it even if he were. I believe this has something to do with the urge to create, and the only way a TV person or a movie person can become a creator is to sink the guy who did it to begin with. I’m not really complaining about NBC, because by and large they set out to be fairly faithful to the general theme of Stuart, and they did not try to corrupt or demolish it. But there were a hundred places that, if they had wanted to take me into their confidence, I could have bettered for them. It was their choice, not mine. The Johnny Carson narration was straight-forward, but muffed several spots that need not have been muffed. The music was good but in many places overpowering and over-riding. It fought with the words just when it should have been peaceable. I am fairly familiar with the text of “Stuart Little,” but when Stuart asked Margalo where she came from, and she replied, “I come from fields once tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle” I couldn’t hear a damn thing against the musical background. At that particular moment, there shouldn’t have been any music anyway, if I may rudely suggest such a departure.
But the filming was ingenious throughout, and it certainly took a lot of dedication and a lot of doing. The sailboat race was pulled off despite great physical difficulties, and the schoolroom scene was effective because of the good faces, even though the script was not right, to my mind. . . .
Yrs,
EBW
• U.S. Ambassador to Norway Margaret Joy Tibbetts wrote White after reading his piece “The Annals of Birdwatching,” about Edward Howe Forbush’s Birds of Massachusetts, in the February 23 issue of The New Yorker.
To MARGARET JOY TIBBETTS
[Sarasota, Florida]
March 29, 1966
Dear Miss Tibbetts:
I consulted Webster to find out how to address our Ambassador to Norway, and if this letter should start “Your Grace,” please forgive me. I’m always in some kind of trouble. It was a triple pleasure to hear from a Tibbetts of Maine, an American Ambassador, and a woman whose mother released a hummingbird from a web, all in one.
Your mother’s experience differed somewhat from mine in that her bird was caught in an orb web, where there was a practicing spider, and mine was caught in some dusty cobwebs in my woodshed. I have an idea that the “old spider, about the size in diameter of a fifty cent piece” was Aranea Cavatica, the common grey spider that inhabits outbuildings. This spider was the one that I wrote about in my children’s book, “Charlotte’s Web.” I rather like spiders; they are not only useful, they are indispensable, and the world would be a frightening place without them, as they are the principal agent that prevents insects from taking over the earth.
When I discovered a hummingbird enmeshed in the cobwebs, I too was surprised that it was unable to free itself. The material spiders use is incredibly strong for its size. I carefully took hold of the bird with one hand, and with the other I plucked the strands of webbing from the bird’s wings and from its tiny feet. (The feet of a hummingbird are delicate and weak, they get so little use.) Having cleared the bird of its trappings, I spent a moment admiring it and savoring the pleasure of having a ruby-throat in my hand, and then released it, to take up its life again in the bee balm and the delphiniums.
I’m glad you enjoyed the Forbush article.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To GEOFFREY HELLMAN
Sarasota, Florida
14 April 1966
Dear Geoffrey:
Thank you for filling in our readers, including me, on Major Bendire.1 And thank you for your respectful reference to me as “Mr.” E. B. White. This has been long overdue in the pages of the magazine. Someone had to break the barrier and I am glad it was you.
As to your supposition that the Major was where he was from some instinctive knowledge of birds, rather than from an urge to get to the little building, it is anybody’s guess. It just could be he was taking a crap. I knew a man once in Canada, in a boys’ camp near Dorset, Ontario, who visited a backhouse in darkness and from necessity and without benefit of a flashlight. He was just about to sit down on the hole when he heard a slight noise. Very wisely he returned to his tent, got a flashlight, and when he got back to the little outbuilding of his dreams and shone the light around, he found a porcupine gnawing the rim of the hole for what salt he could get out of it.
It just goes to show.
I was scared as hell to turn in the Forbush piece because of my almost complete ignorance of the subject matter. It occurred to me that I might easily get clobbered by the entire ornithological community, which now numbers millions, including you, of all people. Well, I got out of it with my scalp, and that is all I asked.
I wonder why Bendire (Bender) was kicked out of that theological seminary in Paris. Probably from watching some kind of courtship antics. The cloth wouldn’t like that.
Item: There is an active Bald Eagle’s nest on the Palmer Ranch a few miles from here. It’s in a crotch of a pine, only about a hundred feet from the Tamiami Trail, Route 41. I have kept my eye on it this winter from time to time, and have taken my grandchildren there to visit it.
Yrs,
Andy
Mr. E. B. White
To ROGER ANGELL
North Brooklin, Maine
May 13 [1966]
Cold
Dear Rog:
You are the foremost interpreter of baseball, the unmanly art, and I thoroughly enjoyed your Astro piece1 and was taken back in memory to the definitive piece on the game you did for Holiday. I thought your Texas observations were funny, sound, and good, as well as instructive, and I’m glad you didn’t pull any punches with old Judge Pickleheinz or whatever his name is. Baseball is for watching, I know that much about the game, even though I seldom understand exactly what is taking place out there. (I had to ask my wife the other day what was the difference between an earned run and a run. She told me a long cock-and-bull story by way of reply, and I am sifting it slowly and carefully.) Eventually I think Texas will have to be thrown away, Pedernales and all, and let the country get along with only Alaska and Hawaii for its oddities. Anyway, thanks for an enjoyable piece. And you were in the same issue with Sissman’s “In and Out,” which to my mind is the best poem we have published since they invented poets.
No news of consequence here. Dinner at the Parsons’ tonight. Six thirty. Grey trousers.
Love,
Andy
• Reginald Allen, then an assistant to the director of the Metropolitan Opera, and his wife, Helen Howe, were summer neighbors of the Whites. Allen liked to celebrate springtime by sending White a few egg cases of the praying mantis.
To REGINALD ALLEN
North Brooklin, Maine
June 6, 1966
Dear Mr. Allen:
The egg cases arrived in what seemed to me very good order, the finest gift I have received in a long time. One is sewed to a clematis vine on the south side of the house, the other to a syringa bush on the north side handy to our little grove of frittilaries, which I have just spelled wrong. Fritillaries. Every morning my first tour of inspection takes me to these choice
locations, to see if young mantises have broken jail. A warm spell of weather, I am sure, will be the thing that does the trick. Aphids beware the Ides of June!
Thank you for your kindness in supplying me with such an interesting addition to our horticultural scene. I have a pair of Yellow Warblers nesting in the honeysuckle bush by the garage door, so my cup runneth over.
With kindest regards to your wife, and again thanks. . . .
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MRS. ISABEL BAXTER
North Brooklin, Maine
June 9, 1966
Dear Mrs. Baxter:
This letter is for your grandson, whose name is unknown to me. I want to thank him very much for Stuart’s skates. They are really ingenious—a good job. I plan to give them to a red-headed girl named Susan Poland who has a model of Stuart. She has him pretty well equipped but I don’t think she has any skates for him and I know she will be tickled. Susan is eleven, too.
Will you please convey my thanks to your grandson.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MARGARET CHASE SMITH
[North Brooklin, Maine]
August 15, 1966
Dear Senator Smith:
I think the Dirksen amendment on voluntary prayer should be defeated. The Constitution is clear on the subject: there shall be no establishment of religion.
Any religious ceremony in a public school is an exercise in orthodoxy—the orthodoxy of the Christian faith, which is correct for most of us, unacceptable to some. In an atmosphere of “voluntary” prayer, pupils coming from homes where other faiths prevail will feel an embarrassment by their non-participation; in the eyes of their schoolmates they will be “queer” or “different” or “irreligious.” Such a stigma for a child can be emotionally disturbing, and although we no longer hang and burn our infidels and our witches, a schoolchild who is left out in the cold during a prayer session suffers scars that are very real.
It should be the concern of our democracy that no child shall feel uncomfortable because of belief. This condition cannot be met if a schoolmaster is empowered to establish a standard of religious rectitude based on a particular form of worship.
Sincerely yours,
E. B. White
• Stephen White, an acquaintance of White’s, wrote from the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, asking for suggestions. White’s reply was included in the Commission’s report.
To STEPHEN WHITE
[North Brooklin, Maine]
September 26, 1966
Dear Steve:
I have a grandson now named Steven White, and I’ll bet he can swim faster and stay under longer than you can.
As for television, I doubt that I have any ideas or suggestions that would be worth putting on paper. Non-commercial TV should address itself to the idea of excellence, not the idea of acceptability—which is what keeps commercial TV from climbing the staircase. I think TV should be providing the visual counterpart of the literary essay, should arouse our dreams, satisfy our hunger for beauty, take us on journeys, enable us to participate in events, present great drama and music, explore the sea and the sky and the woods and the hills. It should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky’s, and our Camelot. It should restate and clarify the social dilemma and the political pickle. Once in a while it does, and you get a quick glimpse of its potential.
As you see, I have nothing specific to offer and am well supplied with platitudes, every one of them gilt-edged. But thanks for the chance.
Yrs,
E. B. White
• Dr. Maurice Root, a physician of West Hartford, Connecticut, was a reader with whom White exchanged many letters.
To MAURICE ROOT
North Brooklin, Maine
21 October 1966
Dear Dr. Root:
Thanks for your letter. I hope you saw more eagles last summer than I did. Years ago there was always a fish hawk poised over our cove, ready to dive. Not any more. The flounders and sculpins are gone from the water, the hawk is gone from the sky.
And there always used to be a pair of bald eagles nesting about three miles from here. They would show up in this vicinity and try to rob the hawk of his catch. Not any more. No fish, no hawk-carrying-fish, no eagle robbing the laden hawk. I find this very sad.
I must read the Book of Job, for laughs.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MAURICE ROOT
North Brooklin
9 November 1966
Dear Dr. Root:
If I’m down, I suspect it’s not as simple a matter as an unhatched eagle’s egg. More likely it is that, like many an aging writer, I miss the warmth and the excitement of brooding a clutch of my own eggs. I had become accustomed to the act of creation; now I’m in the moult and my spirit tends to droop. You were extremely kind to remind me of past performances and the eggs of yesteryear. Thanks very much for your letter.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To FAITH MC NULTY MARTIN
North Brooklin
10 November [1966]
Dear Faith:
I do not consider $9.28 too high for a quart of mouse milk,1 specially when you think of the hours those little milkmaids put in, on their little stools. I am very pleased to know that I can get a quart of mouse milk for under ten dollars.
I saw a fine thing late yesterday afternoon when I was out gathering wild rose hips for my wife. In a small apple tree, almost directly above my head, I saw what appeared to be a last summer’s bird nest. When I looked more closely I saw that I was looking at a little young porcupine whose mother had given him instructions on how to act in an emergency. “If White should come along,” she had told him, “simply quit eating your apple and roll yourself into a ball, tucking your feet under you and also your tail, and stay still and don’t talk.” This is just what he had done. . . .
Hope I can see you in New York, but we will probably skirt around the city on our way to Sarasota.
Love,
Andy
To CAROL AND ROGER ANGELL
Sarasota [Florida]
January 9 [1967]
Dear Carol and Roger:
You will have forgotten by this time, but at Christmas you sent me a pretty tie and a sad book,1 and I love them both. I use the tie to push me over the edge when I am at my sartorial greatest, and I use the Nathan Silver book to cry into. It’s such a wonderful record. It makes me feel so OLD. You know what they were doing, don’t you, the year I was born—they were beginning to demolish the reservoir at 42nd and Fifth to make way for a public library to house the books that little Elwyn White would write when he got big enough to hold a pencil. I saw my first circus in Stanford White’s yellow brick Madison Square Garden, holding tight my father’s hand. I covered the opening of the Roxy and the Paramount for Talk, escorting a girl named Mary Osborn to the Roxy to impress her with what a fellow I was in journalism. I went off to college, a green freshman, aboard a Hoboken ferryboat. I was gliding into middle life when they raised the great Trylon and Perisphere, to make all the other phallic symbols around town look like peanuts. The saddest picture of all to me is the one of the Rhinelander Gardens, on West 11th, the hub of the wheel of my salad days. (There’s a metaphor to rassle with!) Well, New York may be lost, but it is not forgotten, and this exciting book will help me keep it in mind. Thank you for choosing it as a gift.
This has been a strange winter, so far, for me—the winter of the wild young dogs. I shouldn’t have landed here without a full-time kennelman. These two puppies2 need about 38 acres in which to let off steam, plus a house that their owner owns free and clear. Here, all is restriction, confinement, frustration, and discipline. I feel so sorry for them in their pent-up exuberance, I tend to spend all my waking hours and a few of my so-called sleeping hours in their company. I rise early and am out early, to get in some brisk work before breakfast. This “private” park, with its clipped cedars, sorrowing doves, well
-tended lawns and rose gardens, and faintly stuffy oldsters, is not exactly a paradise for a couple of pot-smoking pups who dream of trips. We are also perilously near a highway (Higel Avenue) that rivals the East River Drive for frenetic energy, so I don’t dare be too casual about liberty. What I usually do, to start the day, is to put Maggie in leash, and let Jones come along free, as an outrider. He is off like a bullet, but never really separates himself from the hunt proper, and I find I can trust him to return with us, after a quick spin around the Circle. He dashes from one pissing tree to the next, and sometimes raises his leg so high he falls over. Maggie, of course, is furious and jealous. She pulls like a steer, gagging herself and emitting horrible coughs and groans. Jones has a set-piece for an enemy—a tall, dingy, rangy yellow mongrel who emerges at the same hour (7:30 a.m.) from a known driveway. He is a sort of Yellow Dog Dingo. Spotting him, Jones bristles, then starts bouncing straight up into the air, springing from all four legs, to increase his stature. He invariably faces down this yellow dog, and puts him to rout, which he dearly loves. There is another element in it, though. Secretly, Jones wants to explore this dog and hobnob with him, and two or three times this has been accomplished, with sparks flying in all directions. When I return from this exhausting early-morning jaunt, I put both dogs to a hitching post (any handy doorknob) and do a preliminary cleanup of the foul kennels. I have a papier mache chamber pot that I line with sawdust, and I go to work with a trowel. This restores the yards to a semblance of order, and I can go to breakfast. After breakfast, the serious kennel work begins—freshening the beds, patting the pillows, applying new cedar shavings, relandscaping the grounds where holes have been dug, raking the runs, seeding with rye grass, refilling the water pans. And then the brushing and combing and grooming, and the laying-on of hands to discover ticks.
It all takes time. But I have two wonderful puppies, and they are responding, thank God. Maggie is highly emotional and completely adorable. Jones is peppery, scrappy, canny, and semi-obedient. I think I can make a dog of him yet. I have some pictures that I’ll send you when I get duplicates made.