Letters of E. B. White
Page 73
Gaillard told me that rather than pay the phone company an extra charge, you dug a hole in your living room floor so Jeem [Mrs. Trowbridge] could hand the telephone down to you when you were in the root cellar. Is that true? I would like to think that it is.
Burn this.
Yrs,
Andy
P.S. Now that you are out of the chicken business, you can savor the pleasures of keeping waterfowl on your place. In the spring I should be in the position to start you off with three or four green goslings from my incomparable goose Felicity, who laid 42 eggs in the 1971 season and 41 in the 1972. Geese are great to have around, because they stir the air. They are sagacious, contentious, storm-loving, and beautiful. They are natural hecklers, delight in arguing a point, and are possessed of a truly remarkable sense of ingratitude. They never fail to greet you on your arrival, and the greeting is tinged with distaste and sarcasm. They take parenthood seriously, are protective of their young but never indulgent. When my young gander is impatient for grain, he seizes the food-box in his mouth and bangs it against the wall, and this racket can be heard all over the place. You’ve never seen a hen do anything like that. Another fine thing about geese is that they are as easily steered as a modern car—a great convenience. Their bowel activity is, of course, legendary.
To FAY RABINOWITZ
North Brooklin, Maine
December 8, 1972
Dear Mrs. Rabinowitz:
I think less than nothing of some of the letters I get, but yours amused me, and I was glad to know that Wilbur’s retort stimulates your jaded math students.1 I am glad to participate in the great work of education. I sometimes even wish I had an education myself, but it’s too late now.
Many thanks for writing.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• While hospitalized with labyrinthitis, White received the news of the death, in New York, of his old friend Robert M. Coates.
To ASTRID P. COATES
North Brooklin, Maine
February 27, 1973
Dear Boo:
. . . The saddest day of all in the hospital was the day K phoned to tell me that Bob had died. I have thought about you a great deal since, even though I haven’t mustered the courage to write. The one comforting thing was that I knew you were in the hands of Jap and Helen. I don’t know what is going to happen to this benighted world if the Gudes ever disappear, those lovely and indefatigable friends to all those in trouble and in despair. I lay there in the hospital thinking about Bob by the hour, what he looked like, the sound of his inimitable voice, and all the days and times I had known with him from away back—the good days, the early times, the Village years, the Gaylordsville Saturday nights when all was young and gay, and Bob shining like a great red lantern over everybody and everything, with his mind darting about like a swallow in air. I had quite a few friends in those days, and they fell pretty much into two classes—the ones I treasured for one reason or another but didn’t particularly want to be with (for one reason or another) and the ones I treasured and could never get enough of. Bob belonged to that second group, and I never remember seeing him approaching in corridor or street but what my heart leapt up at the sight. Bob looked the way Hemingway would like to have looked. One was real, the other ersatz. And I remember how proud and happy I felt the day Bob came to visit me in my cubicle to say that he had liked my piece “The Door” and how pleased he was with the word “ugliproof.” I remember that. A young writer doesn’t forget things like that, no matter how old he gets. I guess if I had been born a girl I would have fallen madly in love with Bob—I don’t see how I could have escaped. For a man of his talents, he had the least side and the most natural modesty I’ve ever known in a writing man. I shall always miss him and shall always love him in memory. And my love goes out to you and I hope you are well and strong and doing all right. You must have had a terrible time at the last of it, and I think of that too.
We’ve had bright, cold days lately—a relief. The winter has been mostly a bad one and a bare one. I’m ready for spring, and so are my geese, who can’t wait. K is doing pretty well, and sends love, as I do, and a plea for forgiveness at not having written sooner.
Yrs,
Andy
• A friend of Reginald Allen’s had presented him with twelve wood duck eggs. Allen ended up bringing the eggs to White for hatching. With the help of two bantam hens, White hatched five ducklings, but none survived.
To REGINALD ALLEN
North Brooklin
March 5 [1973]
Dear Reggie:
You have colored me green. I am a brilliant green with envy over your clutch of Wood Duck eggs. What a prospect! What a promise of spring!
I am writing, though, to sound a gentle note of warning about this broody bantam that is to accompany the shipment of eggs. I have had a lifetime of experience with broody hens, and if there is any more unpredictable female, I don’t know what it is. Sometimes, moving a broody as much as fifteen feet from her accustomed location will cause her to become unstuck, and she will take one look at the clutch of eggs and scream, “What’s THAT?” Then she will take off into the sunset, scattering your dreams as she goes.
I acquired my first broody hen in 1911, when I was eleven years old, and I can see her now. She was a Black Minorca—in temperament much like a Leghorn, just a bundle of nerves. I had my fertile eggs all ready for her, but I made the mistake of moving her in the daylight hours, and when I placed her lovingly upon the eggs, she rose in a tremendous burst of passionate disgust and disappeared into a neighbor’s yard. How I ever managed to corral her and persuade her back onto the eggs will always remain a mystery, but I did, and she hatched the eggs. Ever since that episode I have been at pains always to move a broody under cover of darkness, when she is blind and doesn’t know what is happening. Even so, I have not always succeeded.
I am writing all this not to scare you but to comfort you. I have seventeen laying hens, and in the springtime my henpen usually harbors a broody or two. So I want you to count on me as your backup man, in case anything goes wrong. I can come sneaking over to your place in the dead of night, bearing a mesmerized female, all ready to settle down on duck eggs. I also have a neighbor four miles up the road who has a few bantams, and a bantam hen is almost certain to get broody in the spring—also a bantam is a better size for Wood Duck eggs than a standard hen. In any event, I shall not be able to sleep at night until I know that this incubation project is successfully launched. An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life.
What kind of nest are you planning on? What location? How high above ground level? What nesting material? And what about humidity? All these things should be occupying your thoughts to the exclusion of everything else.
I am at your side.
Yrs,
Andy
• The letter that follows was in answer to one White received from some students of children’s literature, complaining about The Trumpet of the Swan. The students said the book contained inconsistencies and contradictions, and lacked “innocence.” They didn’t like the violence or the emphasis on money.
To CHILDHOOD REVISITED CLASS
[North Brooklin, Maine]
March 9, 1973
Dear Anne and Meg and Barbara:
I can’t speak for other authors. In my case, I got into writing for children (“Stuart Little”) by accident, and I persisted because I found it both pleasurable and profitable.
There was no “preparation” for writing “Stuart Little.” I did no research. The story was written, episode by episode, over a period of about twelve years, for home consumption. I had nephews and nieces who wanted me to tell them a story, and that’s the way I went about it. Book publication was not in my mind.
“Charlotte’s Web” was different. I had moved to the country, had experienced the pleasures of a barnyard and a barn, and had introduced sheep, geese, and a pig into the scene. (The rat and the spider moved in without help from
me.) I conceived the idea for the story, and by that time I was well acquainted with the principal characters. Before attempting the book, however, I studied spiders and boned up on them. I watched Charlotte at work, here on my place, and I also read books about the life of spiders, to inform myself about their habits, their capabilities, their temperament. It took me two years to write the story. Having finished it, I found I was dissatisfied with it, so instead of submitting it to my publisher, I laid it aside for a while, then rewrote it, introducing Fern and other characters. This took a year, but it was a year well spent.
I can’t say whether my style and attitude changed between the writing of “Charlotte’s Web” and the writing of “The Trumpet of the Swan.” I was almost seventy when I began “The Trumpet.” Like Louis, I needed money. Perhaps a man loses his innocence at seventy—I don’t know. I had to do a great deal of research for the book because I had never seen a trumpeter swan and, in fact, would not have dared write about the swans at all if I had not been familiar with geese. A man who is dealing in fantasy doesn’t worry about contradictions or inconsistencies. It is true, as you point out, that a swan, equipped as he is with an inflexible bill, would be unable to blow a trumpet. But I leapt lightly over that hurdle: I wanted a Trumpeter Swan who could play like Louis Armstrong, and I simply created him and named him Louis. The cutting of the webs between his toes is also fantastical, just as the bird itself is; I introduced it partly to tell a little bit about the horn and its valves, partly because I thought it an amusing incident. It showed, moreover, that Louis was willing to make a personal sacrifice in order to achieve his goal.
I don’t think there is any more violence in “The Trumpet of the Swan” than in my other books. You can’t have a big bird crashing his way into a music store to steal a horn without stirring up a bit of trouble. The episode is essentially violent in its very nature. As for whether realism and honesty are “good for a young child,” I don’t pretend to know what is good, what is bad. I go by my instinct. I write largely for myself and am content to believe that what is good enough for me is good enough for a youngster. If “The Trumpet” differs from the other two books, I think it is because perhaps it presupposes a greater maturity in the reader. (I am always distressed when I hear of a second grade teacher reading “The Trumpet” to her class—it really belongs more in the fourth and fifth grade level.) It is a love story. “Charlotte” was a story of friendship, life, death, salvation. “Stuart Little” was a story of a quest—the quest for beauty.
As for the emphasis on money, I think it was Jane Austen who said there were only two things in the world worth writing about—love and money. Louis had both problems. I offer no apology.
Thanks for your letter. I hope I’ve answered some of your questions.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MISS R——
North Brooklin, Maine
March 11, 1973
Dear Miss R——:
That letter may have got out of hand, but it was quite a letter just the same, and I was pleased to receive it.
I still love New York, or rather I love the memory of love for New York as it was when I was young. I don’t believe I could live there happily now. When I wrote the piece [“Here Is New York”], in the summer of 1948, the city was already beginning to show a different face from the one I knew and loved. I think the most unfortunate thing that is happening to Manhattan is the steady replacement of small, old buildings (many of which were homes) by large, modern buildings, most of which are offices. If this continues to happen, the city will become simply a vast mercantile house. I don’t think any of our mayors have quite come to grips with this problem.
I am old now. It is heartening to see by your letter that New York still has the power to enchant and inspire the young. When a city loses that, it will have lost all that is worth while in a city. I did indeed love it in my day, and it meant a great deal to me as a young man. I loved the little apartments in the Village where I lived and worked. I loved the sounds and the smells. I loved Turtle Bay and its interior garden, with its tulips and daffodils and migratory birds in the spring. As far as I know, the old willow tree still stands there, ready to leaf out at the first sign of warmth.
Many thanks for writing.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To SUSANNA WATERMAN
North Brooklin, Maine
March 26, 1973
Dear Susy:
Your letter came dashing in just as I had sealed the envelope of a letter I had written Stan. It was a near thing.
I’m sorry that you have been having a sad time with deaths of friends and relatives, and I hope you are not spending too much time assessing your “place in the continuum” but are just out there in the rain with no shoes on as usual. I had to look up “continuum” to find out what it was. My dictionary says it is a continuous succession, no part of which can be distinguished from neighboring parts. The whole thing seems fraudulent to me, because I know perfectly well that I would always be able to spot you no matter how indistinguishable you were trying to be. I could tell you from neighboring parts, in a flash. . . .
Receiving a letter from you is a double pleasure: there is the message itself, and there is the handwriting—which makes each word look as though it had been etched in the ice of a pond by a very fine skater. I shall get your handwriting analyzed some day to see what it means; it must mean something. My own handwriting simply means that I have been drinking and had better use a typewriter if I know what’s good for me.
Yesterday was a lovely spring day here, with snowdrops in bloom under the brush cover of the borders, and a touch of green showing. So what did I do to celebrate? I fell down. Foot slipped on a tiny patch of frosty ground and down I went very fast and hard. I had a 6-foot rule in one hand, and a clipboard in the other. It shook me up and hurt my back, but I broke nothing and am lucky. The rites of spring!
The movie of Charlotte is about what I expected it to be. The story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song. I don’t care much for jolly songs. The Blue Hill Fair, which I tried to report faithfully in the book, has become a Disney world, with 76 trombones. But that’s what you get for getting embroiled with Hollywood.
Thanks again, and I hope we will be seeing you and Stan soon, at the edge of summer.
Love,
Andy
To MR. NADEAU
North Brooklin, Maine
30 March 1973
Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To SOME SIXTH-GRADERS IN LOS ANGELES
[North Brooklin, Maine]
May 20, 1973
Dear Sixth Graders:
Your essays spoke of beauty, of love, of light and darkness, of joy and sorrow, and of the goodness of life. They were wonderful compositions. I have seldom read any that have touched me more.
To thank you and your teacher Mrs. Ellis, I am sending you what I think is one of the most beautiful and miraculous things
in the world—an egg. I have a goose named Felicity and she lays about forty eggs every spring. It takes her almost three months to accomplish this. Each egg is a perfect thing. I am mailing you one of Felicity’s eggs. The insides have been removed—blown out—so the egg should last forever, or almost forever. I hope you will enjoy seeing this great egg and loving it. Thank you for sending me your essays about being somebody. I was pleased that so many of you felt the beauty and goodness of the world. If we feel that when we are young, then there is great hope for us when we grow older.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To EDWARD C. SAMPSON
North Brooklin
May 24, 1973
Dear Mr. Sampson:
Have just finished your account of my favorite living writer, and my whole body tingles with admiration for anybody who had the courage to put it all on paper. My marks are in red ink, and are few.1 They concern, chiefly, matters of fact. My name, for example, is Elwyn, not Edward. Stuff like that.
I think in a couple of places you use the word “forward” for “foreword,” but I have lost track of where they are in the manuscript.
I have one bone to pick with you: your characterization of my poem “Commuter” as doggerel. I am not attempting here to build myself up as a poet, merely attempting to get the exact meaning of the word. My Webster defines “doggerel” as “low in style and irregular in measure; mean or undignified.” “Commuter,” I submit, is none of these. What it is is a rhymed definition, and what you probably don’t know is that it came into being because Howard Cushman and I, casting about for a way to stay alive for a few more days, entertained for a short spell the insane notion that we might write a dictionary of the English language in quatrains. Whenever I think of this majestic project, I am lost in longing for the wild dreams of youth. Anyway, Cushman and I set out briskly to produce our dictionary and got as far as about a dozen definitions, as I remember it, before abandoning ship. I apparently started not with “A” but with “C,” because I produced “Commuter” and “Critic.”