Letters of E. B. White
Page 66
September 14 [1969]
Dear Bob:
I hope Ashley Pratt1 has turned up by this time to cut your green stuff. Like you, I’m not on the soil bank and am glad I never succumbed. Most of the “gentlemen farmers” of my acquaintance charge off a loss every year on their tax, but I have never done it and I feel free as a daisy. I don’t even accept government lime, for fear somebody in Washington might want to know what I did with it and I would have to tell him I got hungry and ate it.
I was interested to hear that you and Boo were planning to collect algae. I’m not sure I know algae when I see it, but the matter came up the other day when I was over at the grain store talking to the grain store man about my pond, into which I was thinking of putting some trout. I described the pond to the man and he came back at me with a question. “You got any allergy in your pond?” he asked. He said trout got along all right if there was allergy in a pond. I wasn’t sure about it, so I bought a small sack of Trout Chow, made by Purina. I now have 27 trout in the pond. I go out of an evening and toss 27 pellets of Trout Chow into the water, one pellet at a time, and you should see the commotion. Sometimes a trout will come clear out of the water, looking pink as a salmon. They were seven inches long when I dumped them into the pond in early summer, and now, after my Chow and my allergy, some of them look like the Loch Ness monster.
. . . I work three or four hours every morning, trying to finish a storybook for children. The first draft is done, but I’m now engaged in the more difficult job of regurgitating it and swallowing it again. I am also greatly handicapped by being unfamiliar with some of the terrain the story unhappily takes me into. I think it was extremely inconsiderate of my characters to lead me, an old man, into unfamiliar territory. At my age, I deserve better.
The book will have to net me about half a million dollars, otherwise I won’t be able to pay off all the registered and unregistered nurses that tend K every day and every night. They are a nice bunch of girls, but the payroll is fantastic. And Maine has just decided on top of everything else to collect a state income tax. . . . Her heart is acting up, and she has been put on digitalis—foxglove to her. All in all, a sad time. We both send our love to you both.
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
October 7, 1969
Dear Ursula:
Thanks for your very generous letter. It frightens me to think that a publishing house is willing to put up large sums of money for something it hasn’t even seen, but everything scares me these days.
I can’t let you have a copy of the manuscript, as there is no copy and I never use carbon paper when I write, and I stay away from Xerox because I don’t like the way it smells. I have a title and am pleased with it, but you’ll have to wait until I turn the thing in. . . .
About the illustrator, the choice will be up to you. I have no preconceptions but simply want my book to enjoy the best drawings we can get. The ideal way, I would imagine, would be to ask two or three of the likeliest candidates for the job to submit a sketch or two after reading some of the script, and see which fellow comes up with the happiest drawing. But I don’t suppose artists—particularly those who are well-established, like Garth Williams—are willing to perform any such antics. Whoever is chosen will have a lot of support and help from me. Garth’s Stuart was superb and did much to elevate the book. His Charlotte (until we abandoned everything and just drew a spider) was horrible and would have wrecked the book. I have no idea what Garth is up to, these days. I do not feel committed to him, but I feel grateful to him. I have no reason to want to change illustrators unless you, after reading the script, think you know somebody who could do the job better. More than anything else, the drawings will need someone’s touch who is humorous and can make them amusing as well as charming.
May God be with us at all times in this fantastic venture.
Yrs,
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
North Brooklin, Maine
October 28, 1969
Dear Ursula:
If Les Davis1 wants to explore the possibilities of making “Charlotte’s Web” into a movie, I guess his first step would be to get in touch with my agent, J. G. Gude, of Stix & Gude. The address is 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The reason the story has never been made into a film is because I won’t sign a contract unless it gives me the right to see and approve the general shape and appearance of the main characters, and the Hollywood big shots won’t sign a contract that does give me this right. This has been going on for seventeen years.
Last winter, John and Faith Hubley had the book under option and were most anxious to do a picture. They had no objection to my proviso, but when they went out to Hollywood to raise the money, they met with resistance. Just as soon as a Hollywood producer stumbles on the clause in the contract that gives the author of the book the right of approval, he chucks up his dinner and abandons the deal. The standard procedure in the movies is to knock off the author with one clean blow, and then proceed with the picture. I am just stubborn enough to stand my ground. It causes nothing but trouble, but somebody has to stand up to Hollywood. It’s such fun. (All it costs me is $75,000—a bargain.)
Yrs,
Andy
P.S. The Disney organization tried for years to beat me down. I didn’t beat, and Disney is dead. But he’s still trying from the grave.
To DAVID DODD
N. Brooklin
[November 2, 1969]
Sunday
Dear Dave:
. . . I hate interviews and do not regard them as a sensible form of activity or a means of enlightenment. When I was a reporter, on the other side of the fence, I didn’t like them. The only interview I recall enjoying was in the very early days of The New Yorker, when I was sent to interview Raymond Duncan, brother of Isadora. Raymond was a sort of transplanted goatherd, down from the Grecian hills. When he received me, in a ratty apartment in the West Seventies or thereabouts, he was wearing toga and sandals. I was in my Brooks raincoat (maybe I’ve told you all this before). Duncan lay down on a couch to be interviewed, in his toga, so I kept my raincoat on and lay down nearby. Everything in the way of an interview since then has been bathetic.
The event of last week was the attempt of my 27 brook trout to spawn. I found them slatting around in the little brook that feeds the pond, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on until I went to the reference books and discovered that brookies spawn in shallow water, in late fall, over a gravelly bottom. They were giving it the old college try, but against considerable odds, as the brook has only two or three inches of water in it and extends from a big culvert under the highway to the pond—a distance of only about a hundred feet. There was a pretty good flow of water and I hadn’t provided my fish with a really suitable spawning area, or backwater, where they could get out of the current. It was fun to watch them. In order to get upstream, they practically had to walk on their hands and knees in certain clogged places in the brook—which was full of leaves and other debris. I went out after dark with a spotlight and continued my observations under dark, cold conditions. I never was able to spot any eggs, and have searched in vain for eggs since. But the fish were thrashing about in good shape, and alternately lying very quiet, in three inches of water, with just a barely perceptible movement of their fins. One of them, driven by the relentless lash of love, actually made it through the culvert and to the ditch on the other side of the highway. I just hope he made it back. Jones enjoyed the whole business as much as I did. He is a great trout dog now, and still has hopes of landing one. Mostly, he spends his time treeing red squirrels, with whom he is carrying out a bitter feud. . . .
This is a dark Sunday, a storm brewing, and deerslayers at the ready, waiting for the coming of Monday’s first light. Joe is in Lisbon, aboard the schooner, waiting to try the South Atlantic.1 Jones is asleep. And lunch is ready.
Yrs,
Andy
To URSULA NORDSTROM
; North Brooklin, Maine
November 17, 1969
Dear Ursula:
This morning I sent off the manuscript to you by registered mail. It is called “The Trumpet of the Swan” and is about a cygnet that has a speech defect—along with some other problems, including a money problem.
If you think the book is promising, let me know. And if you think it’s lousy, I would like to know that, too. The Trumpeter Swan, largest of American waterfowl, was once almost extinct but has made a comeback. This book is about a young Trumpeter.
Yrs,
Andy
To CAROL ANGELL
[North Brooklin, Maine]
November 18 [1969]
Dear Carol:
. . . I think I’ve discovered a misspelled word in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Vichysoisse. It should be vichyssoise, shouldn’t it? I got on to this because of a newsbreak. Webster ducks the whole thing, but my wife spells it “vichyssoise” and so does Betty Crocker. If I have turned up one misspelled word, my guess is there must be fifty. Good. I like that. . . .
We had a letter yesterday from Joe. The schooner had been headed for Madeira, but changed course and made the port of Arrecife, island of Lanzarote, in the Canaries. There, they took on fresh water and diesel oil. They were a week out of Lisbon and had had light air and head winds and had done some motoring in order to keep going. But the last day, the wind had picked up from the west and they had enjoyed a sailing breeze. Joe said he was learning celestial navigation and that the food was great. . . . On the whole, it was a very good report, and by now the boat should be well on its way on the long jump to Grenada. . . .
Jones, who has had a vibrant fall, is poorly at the moment. I tried to correct this by sprinkling worm powder in his dinner, and he countered by chucking up dinner and powder. His interest in red squirrels, normally at a fever peak, lags, and all he did today was attack a mason, rather half-heartedly. Peter Sturtevant’s sloop is being strip-planked, the Joel Whites have a new green Pontiac, guns go off every few minutes in the woods from dawn to dark, and it is time for me to go to bed so I can be up in time to hear the first gun. See you soon.
Love,
Andy
To DONALD W. MAC KINNON
[North Brooklin, Maine]
November 25, 1969
Dear Mr. MacKinnon:
Thanks for your invitation to be questioned by the Institute.1 I’m afraid I shall have to decline.
Recent estimates by an impressive number of scientists give the human race only about fifty years more, at which point Man will join the distinguished company of the Passenger Pigeon and the eastern Heath Hen. Because of this startling development (and because I am seventy and don’t have much time anyway), my interest in the creative process is not to explain it but to put it to work, as best I can and with what strength I have left. I find that not one person in a thousand can conceive of Man as a species that faces extinction. If I have any spare moments at a typewriter from now on, I want to use them to spread the alarm, on the chance that our present trend can perhaps be reversed before it’s too late.
Questionnaires are not my dish, anyway. I have been pumped dry this year, by interviewers from the Times, the Portland Telegram, and the Paris Review. I am fresh out of answers to questions. But I thank you for your interest in my internal combustion.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To FAITH MC NULTY MARTIN
North Brooklin, Maine
December 6, 1969
Dear Faith:
No animal is unimportant, and I am glad you are sticking up for the Black-footed Ferret. Further and more, I was glad to hear from you again after such a long time. I crossed the prairies many years ago and saw prairie dogs but do not recall seeing the Black-footed Ferret. According to my Complete Field Guide to American Wildlife, he is a very different sort from me: he is more active at night than by day. He and I are both wary, though. I am even wary at night—I suspect the house is going to catch fire from the glowing end of a Benson & Hedges regular cigarette, tossed to one side by my unwary wife Katharine.
I have just finished a storybook about the Trumpeter Swan, which is less rare than the Black-footed Ferret but a lot bigger and noisier. I find writing quite exhausting. Do you? We are not planning to go to Florida this winter, as K is not able to travel. Her rare skin disease persists. . . .
I was glad to hear you and Johnny get on all right. I would be getting on with Joe all right, but he is aboard a schooner bound from Lisbon to Grenada. It is hard to get on with anybody who is crossing the South Atlantic in a small boat.
K and I send our love, and we look forward to seeing your piece about the ferret. My Guide says, “Today . . . this ferret has become one of the rarest mammals in North America but Faith Martin is not taking this lying down.”
Yrs,
Andy
To JOHN KIERAN
[North Brooklin, Maine]
December 7, 1969
Dear Mr. Kieran:
It was a real pleasure, as well as a surprise, to find your new book in my mailbag. Thank you for it and for the generous inscription. I would have got this letter off sooner but have been trying to finish up a book of my own, and I find the work rather exhausting these days. Hell, it was always exhausting.
Haven’t had time to do more than take a stroll around inside your tome, but it looks great and I look forward to beginning at the beginning and proceeding in an orderly fashion. I discovered—and felt grateful for—the passage in which you paid your respects to the New Yorker writers in the reign of Ross. Even though I happened to have been one of them, I quite agree with you that they were a formidable bunch and the total product is impressive. It is fashionable nowadays to take pot shots at The New Yorker, so it pleased me to read a happier (and I think sharper) report by you.
Your house and my house seem to have a certain similarity. My wife is gradually disappearing from view behind a wall of books that are so large and heavy as to stagger the mind and endanger the timbers. Luckily, the fellow who built this house more than a hundred and fifty years ago anticipated something of the sort, for he hewed in the grand manner—12” ? 12”, 10” ? 10”, 6” ? 6”. I guess we are all right for a while, but Katharine’s books (mainly horticultural) are a threat. She is not well, has to spend a lot of time in bed with the foot cranked up to take the strain off her spine, and can’t lift heavy things. But the garden books keep arriving. I passed by her bed the other day and noticed a new arrival that simply said: Nightshades.
I’m not a bookish fellow myself and have not done much reading in my life. (In your list of 100, I think I have read 32.) But I walked right through your “Natural History of New York City” as in a trance. I’ve read most of the books that have been written about small boat voyaging, but that’s the extent of my reading.
Thanks again for “Books I Love,” and may you have pleasant holidays, with good health and good spirits.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
P.S. On page 177, you speak of “a collection of light verse” edited by me et ux. I think you must mean “A Subtreasury of American Humor.” The book contained some verse, but mostly prose. I’d gladly send you a copy but we have no spares.
• With the manuscript of The Trumpet of the Swan in the hands of his publisher, White set about designing a jacket. No artist himself, he persuaded a neighbor, Mrs. Guy Hayes, to do a rough sketch that he could show Harper. Mrs. Hayes, working in watercolor, produced a picture that took everyone’s eye and that Edward Frascino followed closely in his illustration for the jacket.
To DOROTHY HAYES
North Brooklin, Maine
December 10, 1969
Dear Dottie:
It is great that you will do a sketch of the jacket for The Trumpet of the Swan. I wish I had more stuff to send you—I am fresh out of swan pictures because I sent everything to Bolognese.1
My idea is as follows: An 11-year-old boy is seated o
n a log by the water’s edge of a small wilderness pond. It is a marshy sort of place—reeds, sedges. The time is late spring. The boy has dark hair and dark eyes. His back is toward the viewer, but you will probably want to show part of his face as seen from the rear. He is a quiet, serious boy and is enchanted by what is happening—the lacing of his moccasin is being pulled by a day-old cygnet (baby swan) who has emerged from the water to tug at the lace, bracing himself as a robin braces to pull a worm. One of the cygnet’s parents—the old cob—is worried at what is going on. His beautiful head and neck are a prominent element in the design. You can arrange him any way that seems to work, but he should be in an attitude of partial protection for the young cygnet, typical of swans and geese.
The adult bird is pure white, with black bill, black legs, and black webbed feet (three toes). The cygnet is greyish (tanny greyish), with mustard-colored legs. The boy should be wearing a jersey or sport shirt, jeans, and moccasins. He has a hunting knife in his belt.
I can’t draw a darned thing and you needn’t take my quick sketch too seriously. I haven’t even tried to show the little cygnet pulling the lacing. I have shown cattails, but I suspect cattails wouldn’t be in blossom when swans hatch in June. Any sort of reedy vegetation will do—tall, thin, wispy. A pond lily in the water would be correct if you also need something like that. My cob appears to be in the foreground, but he should really be more in the background, I think. As for the lettering—any arrangement would be all right, but I suspect that the way I’ve shown it may work out best. The scene should suggest awe, wonderment, enchantment—not action, except the tiny act of tugging at the lace. The boy should probably be rather hunched over, unsmiling.
Maybe you should pick up, at Scribner’s Bookstore, a book called “The Last Trumpeter.” It is loaded with swan pictures. I sent my copy to Bolognese.
Love, haste,
Andy
• Garth Williams’ failure to get the job of illustrating The Trumpet of the Swan was a severe blow to him and a great disappointment to White, who had found Williams easy to work with and who felt in his debt for the success of the two earlier books.