Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  I can’t recall whether I accepted or declined the first invitation to join the Institute. I did accept the Gold Medal for Essays and Criticism and was pleased to get it. Essayists are thankful for small favors. And this year I accepted, or answered, the call to the Academy but have not been inducted yet. I’ve never understood the relationship between the Institute and the Academy—I like to think it is an illicit one. Probably you have delved into the matter.

  I’m not planning to be present at the Ceremonial this month. Never go anywhere any more.

  If you are trying to pin down the date of my entrance into the Institute, I’m sure the Institute’s records would show it. Boy, do they keep records!

  My non-participation in the ceremonials and gatherings up at 155 Street does not mean that I have anything against these organizations. As far as I know they are worthy and fine. It’s just that by nature I don’t go in much for ritualistic occasions. . . .

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To DOROTHY JOAN HARRIS

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  June 28, 1974

  Dear Mrs. Harris:

  I’ve yet to see the book that was effortless to write. They all take it out of you, one way or another. . . .

  If you are at the moment struggling with a book, what you should ask yourself is, Do I really care about this particular set of characters, this thing I am doing? If you do, then nothing should deter you. If you are doubtful about it, then I’d turn to something else. I knew, in the case of Charlotte, that I cared deeply about the whole bunch of them. So I went ahead.

  May good luck go with you.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  • In January 1975 Beulah Hagen retired after forty years at Harper & Row, and Corona Machemer became Assistant to Cass Canfield.

  To CORONA MACHEMER

  North Brooklin, Maine

  June 11, 1975

  Dear Miss Machemer:

  I’m going to like being edited by a girl who grew up overlooking Snow Pond.1 I always wanted to try a canoe trip down Belgrade Stream from Long Pond to Messalonski, which according to my map drops only about six feet in ten miles, but I never made it. However, as a very young boy I used to arrive early in the morning at the Belgrade Station with my family, where we were met by Millard Gleason and his buckboard and team, to take our trunks and ourselves over the hills to Great Pond and the Gleason Shore. There have been no adventures since that equalled it in splendor. You probably don’t remember the Salmon Lake House, an old inflammable situated on the stream that connects Ellis Pond with Great Pond. It burned down, just as everybody knew it would. . . .

  I hope we can have galleys2 by the end of June. June is by all odds the most difficult month of the year for me, with its lilacs, its apple blossoms, its timothy, its wild plum, and all the other pollens; and this year it has been made even more difficult by the failure of my heart to stand up to any more pollenosis, so that it has lost its rhythm and now goes one two three four hello-there-everybody! One two three four. Only a set of galleys can get it back in rhythm again.

  If Gimbels has let you down, you can bring your dirty clothes here—we have a washing machine that is operational. I look forward to working with you on this highly dubious project. I think publishers are scared of books of letters, and I don’t blame them. But once you’ve got into it, there is no place to go but forward. Onward and upward. It never occurred to me, when I got into this thing, that it was an entirely different kind of exposure to the ones I had been used to as a writer of prose pieces. A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist—nothing shields him from the world’s gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time—unless he is dishonest.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  • In the October 2, 1975, issue of Choragos, a Mount Holyoke College publication, a short article on jogging had appeared under Martha White’s by-line. Despite a copy of The Elements of Style on her desk, the lead sentence read: “Joggers on the Mount Holyoke campus may have been unusually restless this last week, due to the heavy rains....” The final paragraph read: “One note of caution however: William and Emily Harris, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, were arrested in connection with the Patty Hearst case on September 18, after they ‘had just finished jogging and were still sweaty in their tennis shorts when they were picked up.’ (The Boston Globe, Sept. 19) So, you see, jogging may be injurious to your health—best consult your lawyer first.”

  To MARTHA WHITE

  North Brooklin, Maine

  October 11, 1975

  Dear Martha:

  Your piece on jogging delighted me. I had begun to wonder whether the members of your generation, with their love of flowers and impatience with war, had lost the comic spirit. So when I got to the last paragraph of your article I burst out laughing and hoisted a flag. All is not lost, I thought, as long as I have a granddaughter who consults her lawyer before jogging.

  I hope you are enjoying the journalistic life. It is a good life in itself, and it affords the best training for anyone who may want to try the short story, the novel, or the essay. Journalism has played a big part in my life, and I still feel more at home there than anywhere else.

  I was mystified by the name of the paper in which your piece appeared. Haven’t got the clipping in front of me, as my diligent wife mailed it back to your mother before I was through with it. The name sounded something like Chocorua. And I was going to instruct you, as a veteran of the syntactical wars, not to use “due to” and not to quote a phrase that doesn’t need quotation marks—but I am licked without the text before me. The trouble with “due to” is that it is acceptable in some constructions but not in others (too involved to go into here). Easy substitutes are “owing to,” “because of,” and “thanks to.” So much for your stylish grandpa.

  Let’s have a lot more by-line pieces by Martha White! You’re on the way to becoming my favorite sports reporter.

  Love,

  Grandpa

  To DONALD A. NIZEN

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  October 24, 1975

  Dear Mr. Nizen:

  Thanks for your letter of October 16 about the Great White Mixup. The Times is arriving every day now. For a while we were receiving two copies, and this proved oppressive.

  You say in your letter that the New Yorker magazine owes us a refund. They owe us a refund provided the Times has refunded some money to the magazine. Has it?

  As nearly as I can reconstruct the events, this is what happened:

  1. The newspaper stopped coming, without warning.

  2. A form letter from Mr. Innelli arrived, saying that a computer was taking over.

  3. My wife, disturbed at receiving no newspaper, phoned the New Yorker and asked them to renew the Times for us and to pay the bill.

  4. Our secretary at the magazine, Mrs. Walden, shot off a letter to the Times, dated September 10, enclosing a check for $114 made out to the Times by the magazine’s accounting department.

  5. Not knowing that my wife had done this, I sent the Times a check for $114, with instructions to renew our subscription.

  6. When I learned that my wife had been busy, and that the magazine had sent you $114, I sent off a check to the New Yorker to reimburse them. That means, of course, that the Times got paid twice—you got a check from me, and you got a check from the New Yorker.

  7. Two papers began arriving in every mail.

  8. I wrote Ms. Zenette Pomykalo, telling her what had happened, and explaining that we were getting two copies of the Times and that two payments had been made. I suggested that she cancel one subscription and refund the money. The subscription that apparently got cancelled was the one in the name of Mrs. K. S. White, so I presume that the Times refunded some money to the New Yorker. If this has happened, then the New Yorker owes us the refund.

  It all goes
to show that a husband and wife should check on each other’s actions from minute to minute, not just from day to day. Katharine and I ought to know this by now—we will have been married forty-six years come November 13.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  P.S. Today’s mail has just arrived, and there are two communications from the Times. One is from Mr. Innelli, saying that “only one payment was received,” and that “we cancelled the duplicate order which was registered to terminate on September 28, 1976.” What Mr. Innelli and the computer can’t seem to get through their heads is that one of the two payments arrived at the Times in a letter from the New Yorker and that the check enclosed was made out by the New Yorker. If we could just convince Innelli of this, we would be making progress. Mr. Innelli also suggests that I forward copies of the cancelled checks. Well, I did that quite a while ago, and you very kindly returned them. Of course, maybe the Times will have to see the cancelled check that the New Yorker sent. I’m not sure it will be a simple matter to get my hands on this crucial document, but I’ll give it a try if the Times insists. I have it on the word of Mrs. Harriet Walden, who is utterly reliable, that a check was sent, in a letter dated September 10.

  The other item in the mail is addressed to Mrs. E. B. White and is a subscription invoice. It says “Pay this amount—$114.” The chances of our sending the Times still a third payment of $114 are so slight as to be negligible.

  Carry on.

  • Katharine White suffered an attack of congestive heart failure in early November. The following was written to her in the hospital in Blue Hill.

  To KATHARINE S. WHITE

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  November 12, 1975

  Dear K:

  Tomorrow is our 46th, and it is a particularly important one for me because of your having strayed so far away, and then been brought back, and this made me realize more than anything else ever has how much I love you and how little life would mean to me were you not here. Welcome back, and do not ever leave me.

  I had intended to drive to Bangor and bring back a piece of jewelry as a wedding gift, but then I thought of a better idea—I want to give you a small greenhouse, for your plants and your seedlings. I think you will find some pleasure and satisfaction in this if it can be set up properly. I am consulting two friends who have had experience with greenhouses—Roy Barrette and Ward Snow—and am planning to benefit by their knowledge. Small greenhouses come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, and they are built of all kinds of different materials. What we need is something that is best suited for this hard winter climate, and that is what I am trying to find out. Henry and I have talked this all over and have agreed on the perfect location for the greenhouse: it should stand just south of the cutting garden, in what is now the clothes yard. This will need a rock wall and some grading to make it level, but that is a simple matter. Anyway, this is my gift to you on this November 13, with all my love and bright hopes for a green springtime in Maine.

  A.

  To THE EDITOR OF THE ELLSWORTH (MAINE) AMERICAN

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  January 1, 1976

  To the Editor:

  I think it might be useful to stop viewing fences for a moment and take a close look at Esquire magazine’s new way of doing business. In February, Esquire will publish a long article by Harrison E. Salisbury, for which Mr. Salisbury will receive no payment from Esquire but will receive $40,000 from the Xerox Corporation—plus another $15,000 for expenses. This, it would seem to me, is not only a new idea in publishing, it charts a clear course for the erosion of the free press in America. Mr. Salisbury is a former associate editor of the New York Times and should know better. Esquire is a reputable sheet and should know better. But here we go—the Xerox-Salisbury—Esquire axis in full cry!

  A news story about this amazing event in the December 14th issue of the Times begins: “Officials of Esquire magazine and of the Xerox Corporation report no adverse reactions, so far, to the announcement that Esquire will publish a 23-page article [about travels through America] in February ‘sponsored’ by Xerox.” Herewith I am happy to turn in my adverse reaction even if it’s the first one across the line.

  Esquire, according to the Times story, attempts to justify its new payment system (get the money from a sponsor) by assuring us that Mr. Salisbury will not be tampered with by Xerox; his hand and his pen will be free. If Xerox likes what he writes about America, Xerox will run a “low keyed full-page ad preceding the article” and another ad at the end of it. From this advertising, Esquire stands to pick up $115,000, and Mr. Salisbury has already picked up $40,000, traveling, all expenses paid, through this once happy land. . . .

  Apparently Mr. Salisbury had a momentary qualm about taking on the Xerox job. The Times reports him as saying, “At first I thought, gee whiz, should I do this?” But he quickly conquered his annoying doubts and remembered that big corporations had in the past been known to sponsor “cultural enterprises,” such as opera. The emergence of a magazine reporter as a cultural enterprise is as stunning a sight as the emergence of a butterfly from a cocoon. Mr. Salisbury must have felt great, escaping from his confinement.

  Well, it doesn’t take a giant intellect to detect in all this the shadow of disaster. If magazines decide to farm out their writers to advertisers and accept the advertiser’s payment to the writer and to the magazine, then the periodicals of this country will be far down the drain and will become so fuzzy as to be indistinguishable from the controlled press in other parts of the world.

  E. B. White

  • Some weeks after his letter on the Xerox–Esquire–Salisbury arrangement was published, White received a letter of inquiry from W. B. Jones, Director of Communications Operations at Xerox Corporation, outlining the ground rules of the corporation’s sponsorship of the Salisbury piece and concluding: “With these ground rules, do you still see something sinister in the sponsorship? The question is put seriously, because if a writer of your achievement and insight—after considering the terms of the arrangement—still sees this kind of corporate sponsorship as leading the periodicals of this country toward the controlled press of other parts of the world, then we may well reconsider our plans to underwrite similar projects in the future.” White’s reply follows.

  To W. B. JONES

  North Brooklin

  January 30, 1976

  Dear Mr. Jones:

  In extending my remarks on sponsorship, published in the Ellsworth American, I want to limit the discussion to the press—that is, to newspapers and magazines. I’ll not speculate about television, as television is outside my experience and I have no ready opinion about sponsorship in that medium.

  In your recent letter to me, you ask whether, having studied your ground rules for proper conduct in sponsoring a magazine piece, I still see something sinister in the sponsorship. Yes, I do. Sinister may not be the right word, but I see something ominous and unhealthy when a corporation underwrites an article in a magazine of general circulation. This is not, essentially, the old familiar question of an advertiser trying to influence editorial content; almost everyone is acquainted with that common phenomenon. Readers are aware that it is always present but usually in a rather subdued or non-threatening form. Xerox’s sponsoring of a specific writer on a specific occasion for a specific article is something quite different. No one, as far as I know, accuses Xerox of trying to influence editorial opinion. But many people are wondering why a large corporation placed so much money on a magazine piece, why the writer of the piece was willing to get paid in so unusual a fashion, and why Esquire was ready and willing to have an outsider pick up the tab. These are reasonable questions.

  The press in our free country is reliable and useful not because of its good character but because of its great diversity. As long as there are many owners, each pursuing his own brand of truth, we the people have the opportunity to arrive at the truth and to dwell in the light. The multiplicity of ownership is crucial. It’s only
when there are few owners, or, as in a government-controlled press, one owner, that the truth becomes elusive and the light fails. For a citizen in our free society, it is an enormous privilege and a wonderful protection to have access to hundreds of periodicals, each peddling its own belief. There is safety in numbers: the papers expose each other’s follies and peccadillos, correct each other’s mistakes, and cancel out each other’s biases. The reader is free to range around in the whole editorial bouillabaisse and explore it for the one clam that matters—the truth.

  When a large corporation or a rich individual underwrites an article in a magazine, the picture changes: the ownership of that magazine has been diminished, the outline of the magazine has been blurred. In the case of the Salisbury piece, it was as though Esquire had gone on relief, was accepting its first welfare payment, and was not its own man anymore. The editor protests that he accepts full responsibility for the text and that Xerox had nothing to do with the whole business. But the fact remains that, despite his full acceptance of responsibility, he somehow did not get around to paying the bill. This is unsettling and I think unhealthy. Whenever money changes hands, something goes along with it—an intangible something that varies with the circumstances. It would be hard to resist the suspicion that Esquire feels indebted to Xerox, that Mr. Salisbury feels indebted to both, and that the ownership, or sovereignty, of Esquire has been nibbled all around the edges.

  Sponsorship in the press is an invitation to corruption and abuse. The temptations are great, and there is an opportunist behind every bush. A funded article is a tempting morsel for any publication—particularly for one that is having a hard time making ends meet. A funded assignment is a tempting dish for a writer, who may pocket a much larger fee than he is accustomed to getting. And sponsorship is attractive to the sponsor himself, who, for one reason or another, feels an urge to penetrate the editorial columns after being so long pent up in the advertising pages. These temptations are real, and if the barriers were to be let down I believe corruption and abuse would soon follow. Not all corporations would approach subsidy in the immaculate way Xerox did or in the same spirit of benefaction. There are a thousand reasons for someone’s wishing to buy his way into print, many of them unpalatable, all of them to some degree self-serving. Buying and selling space in news columns could become a serious disease of the press. If it reached epidemic proportions, it could destroy the press. I don’t want IBM or the National Rifle Association providing me with a funded spectacular when I open my paper, I want to read what the editor and the publisher have managed to dig up on their own—and paid for out of the till. . . .