Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  I have taken enough of your valuable time. Thank you, thank you, John, for your kind words of 2 December. They meant a lot to me and always will.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To WILLIAM MAXWELL

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  December 22 [1971]

  Dear Bill:

  I woke this morning with the horrid feeling that I had never written you a note thanking you for standing in for me and reading that acceptance speech. I’m at the age now when a man suffers from what is called “short memory”—which means he can remember what he did in 1905 but can’t for the life of him recall what he did day before yesterday. I can’t remember, two minutes after swallowing a pill, whether or not I took the pill. I now keep a chart and make a check mark after a swallowed pill.

  Anyway, I do thank you, from the b. of my h. According to Ursula Nordstrom, from whom I’ve just had a letter, you shone with an unearthly beauty as you stood there. “He stood so quietly, and he looked absolutely beautiful . . .He seemed to have effaced himself completely.” Well, I’m glad you didn’t thrash about. And everybody knows I picked you for your looks. I trust Emmy still finds you beautiful.

  If this is the second letter of thanks you’ve received from me, for God’s sake forgive a weavy old man his excesses. And Merry Christmas to all.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To MARILYN BONDY

  North Brooklin, Maine

  January 2, 1972

  Dear Mrs. Bondy:

  Thanks for your very kind letter.

  You asked whether Charlotte was modelled after someone I knew. Yes, she was modelled after a large grey spider that I knew pretty well. I used to watch her at her weaving and at her trapping, and I even managed to be present when she constructed her egg sac and deposited her eggs. Her name was Charlotte, and I got quite interested in her, and was sorry to have her go. I also had, on this place, a young pig, an old rat, and some sheep and some geese. Altogether, I was in a very favorable position to write a book called “Charlotte’s Web.” I’m very glad I did, and I’m very glad you liked it.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To J. G. GUDE

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  January 5, 1972

  Dear Jap:

  Thanks for sending the record. Do you want it back?

  I hope Sagittarius has noted that 1972 is the Year of the Rat. A good omen, considering Templeton’s role in our lives.

  As for the brothers Sherman and their music, I’ll withhold judgment. Some of the songs failed to suggest “Charlotte’s Web” to me, and there was a noticeable Irish flavor here and there. I have a few suggestions and queries.

  Wilbur sings, “I can talk, I can talk . . .” Well, the ability to communicate is implicit in the book. To make it into a discovery strikes me just wrong. I regard this song as not only out of key with the story but embarrassingly suggestive of Rex Harrison, whom Wilbur in no way resembles. If a song is needed in this spot, it should be Fern’s song: she sings, very quietly, “I can hear him. He speaks.”

  What happened to the lullaby “Deep in the dung and the dark”? Lyric by that sweet singer E. B. White. Many composers have dreamed up music for those words, but apparently the Shermans have let the thing lay. Why? I won’t go to any movie that doesn’t have Charlotte singing “Deep in the dung and the dark.” Not even on a free ticket.

  The song “Zuckerman’s Pig” sounds like the Irish to my ear. Instead, it should carry the lively sounds of a New England country fair.

  I liked the melody “How very special are we/For just a moment to be . . .” It stayed with me and seemed on the right track and in the right spirit.

  Charlotte’s death and, later, the hatching of the young spiders in spring should be turned over to Mozart, for background music. There is an old Columbia Masterworks record that I own and cherish: “Quartet in F Major, for oboe, violin, and violoncello—Leon Goosens on oboe.” The adagio movement of that quartet (just a strain or two) would be the perfect accompaniment for the death of the spider, interlarded with the distant music of the Fair. And the rondo is so bright, hopeful, and cheerful it would be perfect for the resurrection—the hatching of the little spiders in spring. The oboe has a flutelike sound that would be just right for this pastoral story. I’ll be glad to loan anybody this record, if anybody is interested. Mozart clearly had the “Web” in mind when he wrote “Quartet in F Major.”

  Take heart! In the Year of the Rat, anything can happen. I could even smuggle Mozart into Hollywood.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  • Nathaniel Benchley had caught White in a misstatement about their mutual friend the late John McNulty, who had written a song called “Keep Your Dreams Within Reason.” White had stated that the song had not got beyond the title stage—was just something McNulty intended to write. Benchley, who had heard the song sung at Barry Fitzgerald’s house, wrote to set the record straight.

  To NATHANIEL BENCHLEY

  North Brooklin, Maine

  January 27, 1972

  Dear Nat:

  From the depths of my embarrassment I rise to thank you for the correction. It was good to hear from you. The lyrics strike me as something less than deathless, but their author is deathless as far as I am concerned—he pops up almost every day in one form or another, usually when I hear someone say something that I think he ought to hear, would cherish.

  A club should probably be formed, membership limited to persons who were taken by McNulty to Barry Fitzgerald’s house. I am eligible for this club, even though in my whole life I have spent only about twenty-six hours in Hollywood. In the spring of 1945 I was in San Francisco, observing the formation of the United Nations for The New Yorker. John got wind of this and suggested that I return to New York via Hollywood, which I was glad to do because it meant a longer rail journey. John met me at the station, wined and dined me at Chasen’s (at I think Chasen’s expense), then off to Fitzgerald’s and the piano and the tall glasses. I slept at the house of a screen-writer whose name escapes me, and I remember waking with a real stinger and trying to shave while standing on a bathroom rug made of a zebra’s hide. McNulty roused himself and took me off to breakfast, where he plied me with eggs. He said he was a great believer in eggs. (At moments like that I believe only in sudden death.)

  It seems unlikely that the session at Fitzgerald’s failed to include a rendering of “Keep your dreams within reason,” but although the title was well known to me the lyrics probably failed to work their way through to my reception center. I wish you would write me a letter telling me that another song of that era got written: one that Thurber dreamed up and that I was supposed to put to music, “You’re the sugar in my urine, you’re the murmur in my heart.” We never did anything about it, beyond enjoying the general idea. It ought to go over big today, with everybody sick and all.

  Thanks again. And keep your d. within r., Baby.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To DAVID DODD

  North Brooklin

  13 February [1972]

  Dear Dave:

  This is one of those sultry Sunday afternoons when we sit around waiting to see whether it’s going to rain or snow. Skies are grey, every bone in my body foretells the approaching storm, the thermometer has inched up to forty, Jones is asleep four feet away on my couch, a small wood blaze snickers in the fireplace, the geese are skating on the pasture pond waiting for the thaw, K has just climbed the stairs to her bedroom for a snooze, and I am marking time until chores, when I will round up the geese, collect the eggs, water the hens, fill the woodbox, empty the garbage, pull the slide in the henpen, load the bird feeder, lay a fire in the living room, feed the dogs, carry the eggs to the arch in the cellar, and lie down for half an hour preparatory to mixing a drink. I figure the best way to mark time is to write you a letter and thank you for your detailed report on Siesta Key [in Sarasota] and for the clippings. I had to laugh when I got to the story of the Arvida h
earing,1 which the Mayor sat out in the Intensive Care unit of the Hospital. If Sarasota had had a modicum of intensive care about thirty or forty years ago, it might be a far fairer city today—and the fishing might be better, too. I miss the early times of Fiddler Bayou, the years when K and I occupied the Achterlonie house and really enjoyed ourselves. There were no condominiums, and everybody had plenty of time of day. And when the sun failed to shine, we lay peacefully listening to the rain.

  This morning it was like a spring day here, the ground bare and a definite feeling of change. About ten days ago we had a tremendous gale. Our power was gone most of the night, trees went down, and the Deer Isle Bridge pulled a tendon. It’s a lofty bridge, and when it gets slatting around in a high wind it seems to lose its cool. All schools on the Island and in the adjacent mainland towns were closed for a week because parents didn’t want their children bussed back and forth across a wobbly bridge. Even now, traffic is limited to a maximum of twenty tons. The designers of the bridge flew on to have a look, and as yet nobody knows just what’s going to happen. But there is always something happening in Brooklin.

  I don’t much care for a bare winter like this one. It seems unnatural and uncozy. Last winter, for all its roughness, was more satisfying to the spirit. And there was less sickness when we were under mountains of snow. In one respect, though, we’re ahead of where we were a year ago—ten cords of wood have been cut and hauled out. My neighbor, Russell Smith, trailed his saw into the yard a few days ago, and the whole ten cords were fed into the saw while the single-cylinder engine pounded its heart out and the sticks came tumbling off the arbor. Henry [Allen] put on, Russell sawed, and Alan [Smith] took off; and we now have a magnificent pile of wood, ready to be fitted. Susy loves to climb to the summit, for the view.

  (Time out for chores)

  I also wound the clocks, this being Sunday. Susy has now joined Jones on the couch, and they are tussling. She wants to tussle more than he does, so they compromise. Susy is my barn dog and is allowed in the house only on special occasions and under special surveillance—to make certain she doesn’t tear a little hole in K’s non-reparable skin.

  K is deep in garden catalogues. The south windows in the living room are already abloom with forced freesias—a triumph. My chick order is in, for April delivery. My revision of “The Elements” is in the works, and I learned the other day that Debbie Reynolds is to be the voice of Charlotte in the movie. Whether that’s good news or not I do not know. 1971 was a year of pain, pressure, and peril for me, and I’m glad it’s over. I’ve never had such a bad time, never made more money, never done so few things that I wanted to do. Maybe 1972 will level off. I miss fishing with you, which always gave a note of sanity to my otherwise disturbed life. I worry about your infirmities—you always seemed so firm to me compared to myself—and I hope they are quieted down. Glad you’ve had good weather and hope the fishing will pick up before you have to leave for the north.

  K joins me in sending love to you and Elsie.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To WILLIAM MAXWELL

  N Brooklin

  March 27 [1972]

  Dear Bill:

  Sorry I didn’t see you on my brief visit [to New York], and thanks for your note. My trip was a complete mess from start to finish. At Back Bay station, where ghosts spend the night, I asked the porter why the train didn’t come and didn’t come. “They can’t find a engine,” he said.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To ROGER ANGELL

  North Brooklin

  15 May [1972]

  Dear Rog:

  The tardiness and general inadequacy of this note of thanks for “The Summer Game”1 can be laid to my being unable to pry the book out of the arms of the author’s mother, where it is cradled day and night. She is a baseball nut and devoted parent. The hold she has on the book reminds me of the way Elsie hung on to her handbag in the hospital—I saw powerful nurses try to get it away from the bed, but they never succeeded. Same way with K and “The Summer Game.” I’ll get it eventually, though, by some clever ruse or sheer force. I have, of course, caught glimpses of the book, and it strikes me that physically it is a beautiful thing. That’s a marvelous jacket, and you’re lucky, because marvelous jackets don’t grow on publisher’s trees, in my experience. And I have, of course, pleasant memories of reading the pieces in the book when they appeared, so I’ll just go ahead and thank you as though I had been curled up with the book all along.

  I liked the Larry Merchant review. And I will be tuned to the Today Show on the 29th to see whether you look as gaunt at that hour as Barbara Walters does. You asked whether an appearance on the show sells books. I don’t know for sure, but somebody once told me that when that magical moment comes and the book is actually held up so the camera can see it, it touches off an explosion all over America. I can believe it. There are millions of Americans who feel that it would be a nice thing—a cultural thing—to own a book; but they can’t think of a book. When they see a real live book on the tube, their problem is solved for them. Doesn’t make any difference what the title is, it’s a clue.

  A couple of magnificent events have taken place here in the last 24 hours. Yesterday morning, out in the plantroom, the egg case of a praying mantis was breached by the inmates and about fifty baby mantises emerged, loaded for bear—loaded, really, for aphids and other tiny pests. Today, right after breakfast, four dump trucks arrived, one after another, and deposited 20 yards of barn dressing (cow manure . . .) at the edge of our vegetable garden. I have been working on this project for a solid month and finally brought it off. The place has an entirely new, authentic appearance, with these battlements of brown dung looming in the north. As for the mantises, I doubt that they’ll survive, as there is nothing much to eat out there—K and Henry keep their plants and seedlings so clean. A baby mantis is about three-quarters of an inch long and looks exactly like a common pin that has six legs and a pair of tiny hands clasped in prayer. The ferocity of them is awesome. I produced a tiny fly from the bell of a daffodil and presented it to the hungry hordes. One of them leapt on it like a tiger making the kill—never saw such a bloodthirsty infant.

  It’s pretty here now, but the spring is late. Hope your baseball trip goes well, and thanks again for the book about same. Love to Carol and JH.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To W. B. HARRIS

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [May 1972]

  Dear Mr. Harris:

  Katharine has been having a poor run of health, and she has asked me to write to you, thanking you for the letter and the piece in Encounter. When I asked her if she wished to comment on your suggestion about The New Yorker, she replied, “No.”

  I can interpret this response for you, easily and quickly. The New Yorker has never been a magazine of consensus—it has always been a one-man show. Under Ross, it was Ross’s weekly. Under Shawn, it is Shawn’s weekly. Both Katharine and I, who have labored long and hard in the vineyard, approve of this. Dozens of magazines on the newsstands are edited not by a man but by a sort of pulse-machine, and by and large they don’t amount to much. The New Yorker, for all its crotchets, amounts to a great deal. Neither Katharine nor I would swap it for anything that is going round. This doesn’t mean we like everything we see in print, it means we approve of the control by an editor. If you have suggestions for improving the content, send them to the editor. To send them to Katharine is hard on her and, in general, ineffectual, since she is no longer in the counsels of The New Yorker.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To MASON TROWBRIDGE

  North Brooklin

  November 18 [1972]

  Dear Mason:

  I was pleased to get your long letter covering wire platforms, debeaking, coccidiosis, Belgian endive, root cellars, perpetual motion, connubial bliss, pernicious anemia, B-12, chicken lettuce, whooping cranes and Scott Nearing. Almost, if not quite, in that order.

 
; You asked, very kindly, how things were going with me. They are going all right, because I am now 73, and a man who is 73 and still up and around is doing all right. I have had a frog in my throat for quite some time now, and of course with me this develops almost instantly into cancer of the larynx, because that’s the way I am built. A barium swallow (no relation of the barn swallow and every bit as messy) revealed that I was afflicted with globus hystericus. I visited Dr. Gaillard in Bangor under the impression that he would pass a laryngoscope down my throat, but he refused the jump and simply gazed down through his little mirror. He informed me that globus, or “frog,” could cut off the blood supply to the lining of the stomach, bringing on an ulcer. But I had him there. I already have a duodenal ulcer, and therefore am in a position to fight fire with fire. The Bangor Daily News says I am dead anyway. In an article about “skipped” beats, or premature ventricular heartbeats, which I now experience, the News reported that this condition precedes fatal disturbances. And so it goes. I go cycling every day, not for the exercise but because I enjoy cycling—particularly on ice, which is challenging.

  I solved perpetual motion last July when my youngest grandson gave me a guinea chick on my birthday. The chick was only three days old and he, or she, immediately accepted me as his, or her, mother. I still function in that capacity. The guinea is now full grown, in full plumage, and in perpetual motion. He hates my bicycle, mounts me when I kneel, chases cars and trucks, gooses my terriers, and befouls my woodshed. Except at night when he is roosting, his head is never still a minute. And his curiosity is insatiable. I named him Jack, and in another couple of months he will probably be laying eggs—which I won’t know what to do with. . . .