Letters of E. B. White
Page 74
The critic leaves at curtain fall
To find, in starting to review it,
He scarcely saw the play at all
For watching his reaction to it.
Today, as I think how many times “Commuter” has been reprinted, I wonder whether we shouldn’t have plunged on with our ambitious plan. Doggerel it wasn’t. Dreamy it was.
On page 41, I have questioned the word “well.” You have every right to use it. But to an insider, the story of The New Yorker has yet to be well told. Many staffers were indignant about parts of the Thurber book. Rebecca West’s review of it came close to expressing their feelings. The Kramer book, as I recall it, was simply inadequate.
On page 113, I can fill you in a bit about Fern’s being “vital to the story.” I found this out to my sorrow, for the story did not contain Fern as I first wrote it. I finished the job and was on the point of turning in my manuscript to Harper when I decided something was wrong, or lacking. I set the thing aside, and then gradually rewrote the whole book—this time with the little girl. It was a lucky move on my part, a narrow squeak.
Thank you again for letting me see your manuscript. I can sympathize with you in your feeling of frustration at being held up so long, and I wish you a fair tide when the book is at last launched.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To EDWARD C. SAMPSON
North Brooklin
31 May [1973]
Dear Mr. Sampson:
To answer your questions:
I am still doing the newsbreaks for The New Yorker. The connection began around 1926, I think, and I am still at it. Not many funny ones come in any more—the days when people knew what was funny seem to be long gone.
My preference would be upper case. The Lady Is Cold. Here Is New York. Every Day Is Saturday. I hadn’t realized that my titles were so full of the verb is. Maybe they should all be changed to was.
I am with you in not liking the word “classic.” I don’t like the word “humorist,” either. “Archy and Mehitabel” is, to my mind, a distinguished work in American letters, and whether it is a classic or not, it doesn’t deserve the adjective “minor.” There is not a minor word in it. The piece about Warty Bliggens is a brilliant exposure of man’s startling assumption about his relationship to nature. I have never read anything to beat it.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
To MARTHA WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
31 May 1973
Dear Martha:
I will be thinking of you on Commencement Day and wishing I could be there to see you graduate. After four years of unremitting effort at Northfield and Mount Hermon, not to mention patience and high accomplishment, you now have something to show for it. I stole that sentence out of Charlotte’s Web but had to remodel it a bit to fit the occasion. I send this letter off, carrying my congratulations on your achievement and carrying my love....
When I think of you standing right at the edge of everything, starting off for Spain, starting off for college, there is so much that I wish for you in life—so much of goodness and happiness and luck in the search for whatever is beautiful and fulfilling in this naughty world. My wishes fly upward and outward, and if wishing will do any good, you should have no fears for the future—all will be serene and fruitful and felicitous. And all will be deserved. The wishes of a man for his only granddaughter!
Here at home, all is rainy and green and somber and sunless. Everyone is starved for a burst of sunlight. We had a small burst yesterday, after about four weeks of dark weather, and everybody felt momentarily reborn. Susy is so dirty and filthy from living in mud, she looks more and more like an old sheep in need of shearing. She plunged into the trout pond yesterday afternoon but just stirred up the bottom and came out more bedraggled than ever. I guess I shall have to get her into a bathtub for a beauty treatment. The cold I contracted almost three weeks ago is still with me and others are having the same difficulty. Last Saturday, the Alumni Banquet at the high school became a local sensation when thirty people fell ill of food poisoning. It was the potato salad, everyone says. Lilacs and apple blossoms are all ready to spring, and the roadsides are all alight with wild pear and cherry....
Congratulations, my dear Martha, on your four years of study at Northfield, and I do hope you have a happy day and smiling weather for your Commencement.
Much love,
Grandpa
To MISS R——
North Brooklin
September 15, 1973
Dear Miss R——:
At seventeen, the future is apt to seem formidable, even depressing. You should see the pages of my journal circa 1916.
You asked me about writing—how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed. I must have written half a million words (mostly in my journal) before I had anything published, save for a couple of short items in St. Nicholas. If you want to write about feelings, about the end of summer, about growing, write about it. A great deal of writing is not “plotted”—most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask, “Who cares?” Everybody cares. You say, “It’s been written before.” Everything has been written before.
I went to college but not direct from high school; there was an interval of six or eight months. Sometimes it works out well to take a short vacation from the academic world—I have a grandson who took a year off and got a job in Aspen, Colorado. After a year of skiing and working, he is now settled into Colby College as a freshman. But I can’t advise you, or won’t advise you, on any such decision. If you have a counsellor at school, I’d seek the counsellor’s advice. In college (Cornell), I got on the daily newspaper and ended up as editor of it. It enabled me to do a lot of writing and gave me a good journalistic experience. You are right that a person’s real duty in life is to save his dream, but don’t worry about it and don’t let them scare you. Henry Thoreau, who wrote “Walden,” said, “I learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” The sentence, after more than a hundred years, is still alive. So, advance confidently. And when you write something, send it (neatly typed) to a magazine or a publishing house. Not all magazines read unsolicited contributions, but some do. The New Yorker is always looking for new talent. Write a short piece for them, send it to The Editor. That’s what I did forty-some years ago. Good luck.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• The collection of essays discussed in the following letter was ready for publication in 1973, but White asked his publisher to hold it until after his book of letters appeared.
To CASS CANFIELD
[North Brooklin, Maine]
September 24, 1973
Dear Cass:
I’m glad you think the “Essays” are worth publishing in this selected form. I have written Beulah [Hagen] to let her know that I approve the title. I would be happier if there were more new material in the book, but the grim fact is I have not been writing much in the last ten years—too busy trying to stay alive and keep my household afloat.
You asked about an advance against royalties. I think I’ll not take any advance on this book—will just pocket the money as it pours in.
You also asked about the extra imprint “A Cass Canfield Book.” I am pleased and proud that you want to put your name on the book. This poses, however, a question of exquisite delicacy that I will now address myself to. My preference is for single billing: I like to think of the book as “An E. B. White Book” if only because I wrote it. The pieces go a long way back in time, many of them, and many illustrious and well-loved names have brushed off on them: Harold Ross, Eugene Saxton, Katharine S. White, William Shawn, Cass Canfield. I think I would feel une
asy to have someone’s name other than my own on this book, despite your clear claim to the title in your capacity as publisher of the work. That, anyway, is my feeling and my preference—to have the title plain and all to myself. But it is not a matter of great moment, and if it would mean a lot to you to use the extra imprint, I don’t want to say no, thereby setting myself up as an elderly curmudgeon. Perhaps I should welcome the chance to “massage an old friend’s ego” [Canfield’s phrase]; might even set up a massage parlor and charge a fee and incur the displeasure of the police.
I am at work on the Foreword, which will be short. Have you entertained the idea of supplying the book with a Preface by a critical observer—someone who would assay the essays? There may be some merit in the idea. These essays are the result of a lifetime of work on my part and are well thought of by a lot of students of the essay. The advantage of having a Preface would be that it would introduce some new material in the book. You would, of course, have to pay a fee to the Preface writer, but since I am not asking for the ten thousand dollars in advance, you are momentarily in pocket and could afford to hire someone. If you think well of this idea, I might be able to suggest two or three candidates for the job, and I’m sure you can think of many more. This “preface” business is not anything I am firm on, it is just something that occurred to me, as a device for enlivening the book.
Yrs,
Andy
• The two letters that follow were written when the recipient was transferring from a college in Pennsylvania to Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, White was in the thick of compiling the first edition of this Letters book, making letter writing difficult.
To MARTHA WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
December 10, 1973
Dear Martha:
I was deeply impressed by your letter of accounting and was delighted that you elected to write Grandma and me to tell us of your problems and your decision....It all seems to make sense to me, and quite apart from that it makes clear that you are really thinking about your education and not just coasting along with the crowd. I feel sad that, having gone through all the business of entering and making a start, you are disappointed with the college, but your letter is entirely convincing, and I see nothing against your plan to transfer to another campus. A good student who is serious about her work should have a challenging, rather than a merely comfortable, environment.
It would be nice if I were in close touch with the academic world and could offer you some real solid advice but I feel ignorant about today’s campuses—out of touch with the real world, living in a little kingdom of my own devising. I do have a few notions and impressions that I’ll be glad to pass along for what they’re worth, which isn’t much. You mentioned wanting to stay in New England. I know just how you feel, because that’s where I feel most at home and, in a way, most directly challenged—even if the challenge is nothing more than the rough weather. I don’t think, though, that you should set too rigid a boundary on New England, for there just might be a college on the periphery (or beyond it) that would meet your requirements....
Yesterday morning I hurt my back lifting a box containing eleven dozen eggs. Something snapped, and I have been in a lot of pain and am wearing a corset. It is a recurrence of an old back injury and comes at a mighty unhandy moment, as I am in the midst of constructing a wheelbarrow for Henry’s Christmas. A wheelbarrow is almost as hard to construct as an English sentence, I am discovering to my dismay. It was fun, though, until my spine let go....
Love,
Grandpa
P.S. As you know, I’m assembling a book of my letters covering about sixty years. Would you be good enough to save this one, on the chance that it might fit into the book?
To MARTHA WHITE
North Brooklin, Maine
11 December 1973
Dear Martha:
That long letter I wrote you yesterday wasn’t a good letter but I was in such pain I was not up to writing a letter, good or bad. What I really wanted to say was that it is a delight to have you for a granddaughter. There. That’s been said.
Love,
Grandpa
To JILL L——
[North Brooklin, Maine]
February 4, 1974
Dear Jill:
Thanks for your letter—I was very glad to get it. And it is nice to know that you are interested in my stories.
“Stuart Little” is the story of a quest, or search. Much of life is questing and searching, and I was writing about that. If the book ends while the search is still going on, that’s because I wanted it that way. As you grow older you will realize that many of us in this world go through life looking for something that seems beautiful and good—often something we can’t quite name. In Stuart’s case, he was searching for the bird Margalo, who was his ideal of beauty and goodness. Whether he ever found her or not, or whether he ever got home or not, is less important than the adventure itself. If the book made you cry, that’s because you are aware of the sadness and richness of life’s involvements and of the quest for beauty.
Cheer up—Stuart may yet find his bird. He may even get home again. Meantime, he is headed in the right direction, as I am sure you are.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
• “Since the emphasis of modern education is tending toward career-oriented goals, we, the concerned Latin students of Hackensack High School, are seeking opinions concerning the relevance of Latin to the school curriculum.” Thus began the letter which elicited this reply.
To MITCHELL USCHER
[North Brooklin, Maine]
[February? 1974]
Dear Mr. Uscher:
I studied Latin when I was in high school. I had a good time with it and have never regretted the experience.
A great many words in the letter you wrote to me had their roots in Latin—a word like “curriculum,” for example, or “relevance.” And although the skilful writer of English prose tries to avoid words derived from Latin in favor of Anglo-Saxon words, there is, I believe, a great advantage in knowing Latin. It helps you find your way around in the English language, so that when you encounter a common word like “opera” you know that you are dealing with the plural of “opus.” Or when you come across the word “interpose,” you can immediately dissect it: inter-, between + ponere, to put or place.
I recommend the study of Latin for today’s students in today’s world—a world that closely resembles yesterday’s world. You speak in your letter of modern education “tending toward career-oriented goals.” In my day, fifty years ago, we did not tack the word “oriented” onto everything, but we were just as interested in a career, just as eager to reach our goal, as are the young students of today. Latin is good discipline, good reading, and the study of it makes good sense. When you know Latin, you know enough to say “guts” instead of “intestinal fortitude.”
Sincerely,
EBW
• Philip Hewes, a New Yorker reader (who had mentioned his lapsed subscription) and a dog fancier, had picked up a copy of One Man’s Meat while he was bedridden and had written to White to inquire whether he still owned a Norwich terrier. Hewes passed White’s reply on to the Norwich Terrior News, published by the Norwich Terrier Club, USA, and it was printed in their Spring, 1975 issue.
To PHILIP HEWES
North Brooklin, Maine
March 20, 1974
Dear Mr. Hewes:
Sorry to hear that you are a dropout but am grateful for your letter and glad you can still read. Wish I could still write.
My Norwich Terrier will be seven in May. His Club name is Jaysgreen Rusty (United Kingdom), and he was sired (it says here) by a dog named Hunston Horseradish. He is known in this house as Jones and is seldom found more than six feet from where I am. He is a neurotic—scarred as a puppy by being shoved into a crate for a plane trip from England, then another plane trip from Boston to Maine. I think somebody along the way must have hit him with a stick, because even
after all these years with me, I can’t pick up a fly swatter without his cringing. I got him from Sylvia Warren, and he almost never made it up out of his bed of neuroses. But he and I are enough alike so that we get on well, and I can’t help being touched by his loyalty—which I think in his case is simply insecurity. He would never take a prize at a show. Neither would I, come to think of it.
I have another terrier—a West Highland White, or Off White, named Susy. She is as open and outgiving as Jones is closed and reserved. Everybody loves Susy. Everybody tries to like Jones. But Jones takes his guard duties seriously and has made several attempts to kill people he thought were intruding. He particularly distrusts women in trousers, drivers of panel trucks, small children, and stray dogs. He has hunted squirrels for six years without bagging one. Susy is quicker than he is and once nabbed a barn swallow on the wing. Sometimes I dream of owning another Norwich—one that looks like a Norwich and behaves like one. But I am known for my outsize dreams. Meantime, I am grateful for small favors, like the little brown one over there on the sofa.
Sincerely,
E.B. White
• Geoffrey Hellman was writing a New Yorker profile of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He wrote White asking about his and Thurber’s connections with the two societies.
To GEOFFREY HELLMAN
North Brooklin
May 3, 1974
Dear Geoffrey:
You are talking to a man who has never been alone and palely loitering in the vicinity of 633 West 155 Street. It’s just an address to me—one that turns up in the mail almost every day on one pretext or another. The Institute and the Academy, whatever else they are, are busy, busy, busy. Someone is always getting tapped, someone is always receiving an Award, votes are always being taken, and poets are always dying and being memorialized. Drinks are served, prizes are won, money is distributed.
I vaguely recall Thurber’s refusing the jump, and I remember finding it a bit embarrassing that he named me and my failure to measure up as his reason for not accepting the Institute’s invitation. I did not like being the bait the Institute would have to swallow in order to catch Thurber. I think Jim should have accepted or declined without bringing me into the thing. But he did.