Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  No, I think Julian (if I may use his first name) should sit down and write his own promotional copy for his airline. When he turns to me he’s just looking for an easy way out.

  But I appreciate his thoughtfulness and want to thank him for the offer of a job.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To LELAND HAYWARD

  [Sarasota, Florida]

  February 10, 1968

  Dear Mr. Hayward:

  Perhaps I am deficient in sporting blood, but I can’t get worked up over the possibilities of that old doomsday piece for the movies. It strikes me as the wrong tale for these times.

  Usually I am reasonably well pleased with what I have written; I was never satisfied with “The Morning of the Day,” and I really have no desire to have it made into a film. I respectfully urge you to get it out of your mind, even if you have to read “Anne of Green Gables” to do it.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  • Ted Weeks, then a consultant and senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly, sent White a copy of his new book and, incidentally, asked him what he thought of Ross, The New Yorker, and Me, by Ross’s first wife, Jane Grant.

  To EDWARD WEEKS

  Sarasota

  March 12, 1968

  Dear Ted:

  Many thanks for sending me a copy of “Fresh Waters.” I haven’t seen the book yet; it is being “held for arrival” in the north. (Katharine and I are sitting out the winter on our favorite sandbar, watching the Gulf of Mexico quietly disappear behind the high-rise buildings.) We’ve not been back to the Milford House since the summer we encountered you there, but we often think back on it with pleasure and longing, and I look forward to “Fresh Waters.”

  Jane Grant’s book, like almost every attempt to explain Ross and The New Yorker, is disappointing. What’s more, she played a dirty trick on Katharine and me. She promised us that we would see proof of our hastily-written contributions, and when we returned the proofs with corrections, she allowed our stuff to appear without the corrections. I haven’t really read the book—just poked around in it. When she tries to reproduce Ross’s speech, I collapse in a fit of ugly mirth.

  Charley Morton, although his association with Ross and the magazine was brief and tenuous, somehow managed to evoke the man and the times better than anybody I have read.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To ANN MORING

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  April 16, 1968

  Dear Miss Moring:

  When I wrote “Death of a Pig,” I was simply rendering an account of what actually happened on my place—to my pig, who died, and to me, who tended him in his last hours. There was no “basic premise” in the composition, and there was no “lack of concern” in my ministrations. Had I not been concerned, I’d have never written the piece.

  The telephone conversation was recorded word for word, as best I could remember it. I had no reason to be angry at the operator—she was doing what she was supposed to do: cut in to find out whether the connection had been established. Like many incidents in time of crisis or of stress, the conversation seemed funny in retrospect, but I did not introduce it for “comic relief” but because it was a part of the whole story and it kept my narrative moving.

  I tend to write about events or circumstances that raise the level of my perception. The death of this animal moved me, heightened my awareness. To confront death, in any guise, is to identify with the victim and face what is unsettling and sobering. As I said in the piece, “I knew that what could be true of my pig could be true also of the rest of my tidy world.”

  I hope you and your instructor have a nice time unravelling these mysteries.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To REGINALD ALLEN

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  June 4 [1968]

  Dear Reggie:

  Just want to report a killdeer’s nest on the second hole of the Blue Hill golf course. I visited it this afternoon on a tip from Ward Snow, the postmaster of BH. Four eggs, almost the size of bantam’s eggs, sharply pointed and the points nicely centered. On bare ground. I watched from my car after a brief observation and saw the hen steal back and settle on the eggs. She had been flushed by an early golfer, wildly swinging. I was almost extinguished by black flies, but am glad I went.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To HARRIET WALDEN

  North Brooklin

  June 30 [1968]

  Dear Harriet:

  I’m planning to break up my so-called office at the magazine and distribute the type, or the typos. I think the first step would be for you to gather up the Garth Williams drawings (framed) and send them here to me. I shall give them to the children’s room of the Brooklin Library. I believe there are two, but there may be three.

  After that is accomplished, the next step will be to empty my locker—which contains a lot of strange books, mostly written by me but in foreign language editions, and an empty (I think) whiskey bottle. Throw the whiskey bottle out of the window so that it will land on the head of a modern poet on 44th Street, and mail the books to me.

  As you can see, I am getting ready to die. How sweet it is!

  The rest of the stuff in that office consists mainly of two or three shelves of weird books that arrived in the mail addressed to me. I doubt that I’ll want more than two or three, and I will select them on my next trip to town. Then there are the desk drawers. These should be easy, and I will do that, too, on my next trip. There is also a framed sketch of frogs, executed by the daughter of an Algonquin waiter. I haven’t decided what to do about that yet. Something will come to me in the night probably. It’s not a bad sketch of frogs.

  Sorry to throw this task at you, but something has to be done.

  Yrs,

  EBW

  To EDWARD C. SAMPSON

  North Brooklin, Maine

  July 10, 1968

  Dear Mr. Sampson:

  I can help. In those days I kept a diary—or, as I called it, a journal. When your letter arrived, I turned eagerly to these yellowed, hallowed, mouldy pages.

  On Tuesday, April 5th, 1920, I began my duties as Editor-in-Chief of the Sun. My principal function was to write the editorials. Early in May, the Sun published a resolution of Quill and Dagger, one of the two senior honorary societies. It read as follows:

  RESOLVED—That we the undersigned senior honorary society will not consider for election to membership in the society at the annual spring bidding members of the junior class who are on probation.

  QUILL AND DAGGER

  On Monday, May 10, 1920, the Sun appeared carrying a lead editorial (written, but not signed, by me) headed “Honorary Society Eligibility.” Following is the text of this editorial.

  One senior honorary society has seen fit to cut down its eligibility list to the exclusion of juniors on probation.

  Honorary societies here and elsewhere have only one excuse for existence, and that is the fact that they represent certain standards. This is fundamental. When a man makes an honorary society at Cornell, he is looked upon as having done something for the University which merits special recognition. The badge which he wears betokens a certain amount of work done: it symbolizes meritorious achievement in behalf of Cornell. Up to the present time, however, the award has been open to some men who, purporting to be doing something for their University, have not even satisfied her first requirement, that of scholarship. Probation has not been a bar to membership in an honorary society.

  Regardless of how this change in eligibility is expected to work in the case of one society or the other, regardless of the objects which might have been in view by the society which adopted it and made it public, regardless of the unfortunate bearing which it may have in the case of certain juniors who are the first to come under the new ruling, and who, pointing to juniors in the past in whose face was not thrown the prerequisite of scholarship, feel that they are not getting a square deal, the move will have an effect
on the general scholarship at Cornell that should prove beneficial.

  Achievement in any branch of endeavor at Cornell should run hand in hand with a reasonable development in the work which the University offers. This is what the Faculty is continually fighting for. This is the great cause of all the trouble—Faculty versus Student—which arises at the end of every semester. The very fact that probation exists is because it serves as a tool in the hands of a Faculty which feels it has to maintain its own against an army of pseudo-students seeking extra-curricular employment. At Cornell there is a definite place for this kind of activity as well as for the other kind, but until a reconciliation is made between the two, there will still be cause for discontent on both sides. The one hope for a reconciliation lies in student recognition of scholarship as a basis to work on. There has been a tendency this year to move in that direction.

  This editorial of mine enraged the members of Sphinx Head, the other senior honorary society. Before the ink had cooled, two of their fellows appeared in the Sun offices in high dudgeon and bearing a counter-resolution which they demanded be published in the appropriate manner on Page One. I said I would be delighted to publish it. This was it:

  RESOLVED, That we, the undersigned Senior Honorary Society, will not consider for election E. B. White ’21, because by so doing, we will be violating the following clause of the agreement between the two senior honorary societies:

  “Any undergraduate eligible to election by the societies who shall be shown to have approached other members of his class with a view of influencing their choice, shall not be extended an invitation by either society.”

  SPHINX HEAD

  To this resolution I wrote and added the following sentence, published thereunder:

  Action in the above case was taken because of the editorial written by the junior in question appearing in the issue of The Sun, May 10, 1920.

  As you can readily see by the documents above, I was learning about journalism fast and the hard way. What I had considered to be a theoretical, philosophical, and detached editorial on the question of honor society eligibility was immediately interpreted as a sinister attempt to influence juniors. This struck me as comical, but informative. I have a fairly clear recollection of the whole business, and I am quite sure that I wasn’t trying to influence juniors as to their choice of societies—I didn’t give a damn who joined what society and did not possess the kind of political mind that goes with such matters. Sphinx Head’s resolution, announcing that I would not be considered for election, seemed to me wildly funny, but I also decided that nobody else would think of it that way. I was wrong. On the morning the Sphinx Head resolution appeared in The Sun, I sat down in Martin Sampson’s class in Goldwin Smith. Before the lecture began, I saw Professor Sampson leave his podium. He strode, erect and silent, down the aisle toward me, paused at my desk, and deposited a slip of paper in front of me. Then he turned immediately, and returned to his place at the head of the class.

  I have this slip of paper. It is pasted neatly in my journal. Pencilled in his fine hand, it reads:

  On account of his editorial of May 10, I shall not invite E. B. White ’21 to dinner.

  OLD PHILADELPHIA LADY.

  I have never felt more grateful to anyone than I did to Professor Sampson on that queer morning. His reassurance was more than just friendly, it was subtle and comical, and I felt suddenly reborn. It was the kind of deed, the kind of incident, that, forty-eight years later, could have saved Columbia from the debacle of 1968, if anybody on the campus had been at work in that human area. It is no wonder that the name Sampson is a magical name to me, even after all these years.

  Your letter mentioned my “involvement in world peace organizations.” I hadn’t known I was involved in any. What were they?

  Yrs,

  E. B. White

  To CAROL AND ROGER ANGELL

  North Brooklin

  July 15 [1968]

  Dear Carol and Rog:

  Your gifts were beautiful and exciting, and I send thanks in abundance. . . .

  The weather has looked up lately, and I am waiting for a flush of well-being to overtake me. A clown over in Ellsworth says I am in a Ménière’s syndrome and has given me capsules to open the dikes of my middle ear. My own suspicion is that I am dizzy for all the old reliable reasons, inability to write being one. It appears that Arnold Wolfers is dying.1 The rate at which old friends are falling off is dizzying in itself. . . . Annie Parson, before finishing Winsor, knocked out a 14-page dissertation entitled “Characteristics of E. B. White as shown through his Essays and Children’s Books.” Annie is a powerful writer. “It is quite possible (she wrote) to believe that Stuart Little is E. B. White. Indeed in real life, Mr. White physically resembles a mouse. He is about five feet six inches tall, with a little pointed face and sharp ears.” (This puts a new light on my passion for cheese.). . . .

  A muskrat showed up in my new pond and stayed around for three or four days, when I think he tired of Jones. Because the pond is so small, the rat looked as big as a beaver. The pond at first looked more like a swimming pool than a wildlife sanctuary, but it is gradually fading into the landscape and is well liked by all. A bittern stops by occasionally, and there are many frogs and tadpoles. No trout yet.

  Thanks, Rog, for sending me the Shawn interview.2 Bill did fine, I thought. And thanks again to the both of you for my birthday presents. So glad Callie landed a job. Love to all.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To EDWARD C. SAMPSON

  North Brooklin, Maine

  August 4, 1968

  Dear Mr. Sampson:

  About those world peace organizations, I felt very strongly that I should never get involved with political action groups while I was writing editorials for The New Yorker. For one thing, it never seemed to me that my federalist comments truly represented the feelings of the magazine as a whole—Ross himself thought I was nuts, a visionary. But Ross believed in publishing the works or the opinions of nuts and visionaries, provided he trusted the person who wrote the stuff, and he did trust me, I think. Anyway, I used to be propositioned by the action groups, because they knew I was behind the editorials. I do not clearly recall the Mrs. Fisher incident, but it would appear that I went as far as doing a piece of writing for them, but withheld the use of my name and therefore any involvement of The New Yorker.

  Another reluctance I had was that I seldom saw eye to eye with any of these federalist groups. I wanted to feel perfectly free to express exactly what I felt myself, and was not a mover and doer, except on paper for my favorite weekly. I think I can correctly state that I never involved The New Yorker with any organization interested in peace or world federalism. I just wrote my pieces. Time, I remember, called them “sententious.”

  E. B. White

  To MRS. N. M. GIBBS

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [August 1968]

  Dear Mrs. Gibbs:

  Thank you for your letter. I am only one of dozens who have written in praise of Thoreau. Here in America his stature increases as the years go by, and lately he has had quite a vogue among people who find civil disobedience an attractive way of life. I am not fully in agreement with him on civil disobedience, but do greatly admire his ability to make an English sentence do his bidding.

  Sincerely yours,

  E. B. White

  To FRANK SULLIVAN

  North Brooklin, Maine

  September 20, 1968

  Dear Frank:

  Elledge visited here, too, thus violating the first rule of the biographer: never make contact with the subject. I’m not sure just what he has in mind—he keeps talking about a “short” book, but I’ll believe that when I see it. Probably I never will see it: I think all biographers subconsciously hope their man will up and die, clearing the boards and making everything a whole lot simpler. One thing Elledge is bugs on is chronology; he’s a fool for the order of events and I have a rotten memory. The years blur. I’m glad you remembered
about Ross and Pete Vischer and the extra mouth to feed. I never seem to be able to come up with anecdotes, perhaps because I used to do anecdotes for Talk and got so the very thought of an anecdote tended to bring on the nausea.

  News of Pete’s death came to me just the other day when I saw it in the Phi Gamma Delta magazine. (They still send me the magazine despite my not having paid any dues in 47 years.) I never made it to Port Tobacco, and never met Wife Three. I had good times with Peter in Ithaca, but we finally clashed one time when he wrote me a long diatribe against Ross—very disciplinary in tone and carrying what seemed to me the implication that the man for the job was Vischer himself. It was a ball that badly needed fielding, and I turn it back.

  As a man of the deep country who loses his power with great regularity and often for periods of eight to ten hours, I got a chuckle out of your “shattering experience” when your lights went off and drove you back to Doriden tablets. We have two distinct kinds of power failure here: the nice cleancut kind when it gets wiped out completely, and the fuzzy kind when a small glow still shows in the light bulbs. In the first kind, all you have to do is draw your chair up to the wood stove in the kitchen and pour out a glass of whiskey. In the second kind, you can’t sit down in any peace of mind until you’ve groped your way down cellar and pulled the plugs on every appliance that is equipped with an electric motor: the water pump, the furnace, the freezer, and (upstairs again in the back kitchen) the refrigerator. Most fuzzy failures are caused by young bucks bouncing their automobile off a power pole, or by a windstorm that drops a limb across the wires. . . . Was great to get your letter—wish we ever saw your fabulous face.

  Love,

  Andy

  P.S. Heard last night of the death (at forty) of Rudd Truax, only child of Alethea and Hawley. And of course you know about Al Frueh, the indestructible.1

  • At work on The Trumpet of the Swan, White wrote to Howard Cushman, who was now living in Philadelphia, asking him to scout the zoo for him. Cushman paid a visit to the zoo, photographed the trumpeter swans, and sent White a lot of background material.