Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  Yrs gratefully,

  [E. B. White]

  To MR. CHUCK JONES

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [March 6, 1981]

  Dear Mr. Jones:

  Thanks for your reassuring letter.

  After eighty years of trying (and failing) to simplify my life, I recently decided that the way to accomplish it was to close the covers of my books to the adaptations of stage or screen. I have had some miserable experiences. If this bold stroke of mine came on the eve of your proposal for “Stuart Little,” which could conceivably have led to a happy experience, I guess it’s my hard luck and perhaps yours, too. I can take it if you can. After listening to Wilbur sing “I Can Talk, I Can Talk,” in the Hanna-Barbera picture, I can take anything. I wanted to run on my sword but couldn’t find it.

  I am sorry to disappoint you. Having closed the door, I feel I should leave it that way, not try to second-guess myself.

  Sincerely,

  [E. B. White]

  To EUGENE KINKEAD

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [April 1981]

  Dear Eugene:

  In the course of what passes for my career, I submitted pieces under twenty-five names other than my own. As I recall it, I sometimes signed a pseudonym when I found a piece wanting in merit, or virtue. I wanted the name “E. B. White” to be associated with excellence—literary splendor. It is possible that I once sent in a piece to the NYer signed with a phony name to see if I could get a rejection instead of an acceptance, but I have no clear recollection of having done that. I wouldn’t put it past me, though. I was a fidgety young man, worried about all sorts of real and imaginary failings.

  I remember that Ross used to worry about the possibility of cartoon ideas appearing almost simultaneously in Punch and the NYer, but I can’t think of any example, or happening. Ross tortured himself with gnats and midges in his mind. I think he enjoyed torture and liked to parade it.

  Please get your book out before I die. I’m having a book out in October, if you can believe Harper.

  Yrs,

  [E. B. White]

  P.S. [Handwritten] I went for a walk with that Nature fellow once and signed my piece “E. Bagworm Wren.”

  To MR. ROBERT E. L. STRIDER

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [ca. May 19, 1981]

  Dear Bob:

  I’ve owed you a letter for an unconscionably long time. Was glad to get yours and catch up with your news. It must be a refreshing change to be an apartment dweller in Boston after being housebound in Mayflower Hill for a long and sometimes rough period of time.

  My own news is dull and generally gloomy—which is perhaps why I tend not to sit down and write to my friends. I have an unspeakable variety of ailments that keep me from enjoying life as I would like to. I eat rhubarb to fend off arthritis, but it doesn’t really work. I eat bananas to replace the potassium that I lose because of taking a blood-pressure pill, but it doesn’t really work, either. I eat apricots for vigor, but my strength gradually dwindles. So I end by drinking gin to gain the quick illusion of well-being. (It works for about forty minutes.) Enough of my crumbling body! On to the oversoul!

  Except for a book that’s coming out in the fall, nothing in my life makes any sense, and I’m not sure the book does, either. It is called POEMS & SKETCHES OF E. B. WHITE. I spent the whole introduction explaining that I was not a poet. Corona arranged the pieces for me and came up with the brilliant idea of concealing the poems among the prose pieces, so they won’t be noticed.

  The only creative thing I’ve accomplished lately happened two weeks ago on a Sunday morning. A goose that had sat for 28 days got tired of the work just as the goslings were ready to break out of the shell. I brought four cold eggs into the kitchen, heated them up on the stove, and performed four Caesarian sections between breakfast and lunch, to the utter amazement of the country girl who was getting lunch for me and who had never seen a delivery. Of the four operations, three were successful. I plan to continue my education, working toward a D.V.M. degree. I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried to pick a bird out of an egg—it is touch-and-go the whole way. Nerve wracking. One drop of blood and you can kiss the chick good-bye. The shell of a goose egg resembles nothing so much as concrete. I used a 5⁄32-inch drill to make the first incision. As each gosling dried off, I returned it to its mother in the barn cellar, who was delighted with the chick and unusually cordial toward me. Enough of my rustic affairs! On to the end of the letter!

  Say hello to Helen for me, and if you ever feel thirsty in the vicinity of Brooklin, stop by. I may visit New York for a few days in July, but I’ll believe that when it happens.

  Yrs,

  [Andy]

  To MR. ANDREW A. ANSPACH, HOTEL ALGONQUIN

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [June 9, 1981]

  Dear Andrew:

  If your letter means (as it appears to mean) that the Algonquin is presenting me with the bed set, I am whelmed by your generous gesture toward this aging guest. I certainly expected to pay for the Eclipse and stand ready to do so if I have misinterpreted your note. In any event, my thanks again. My old spool bed has been lengthened by four inches and the ensemble is fabulous. Am hoping to visit New York to celebrate my 82nd birthday (July 11). If this works out I’ll be staying at the hotel and will hope to see you. My health will have to improve if I am to make the trip.

  Yrs,

  [E. B. White]

  To MRS. ELIZABETH DONALDSON

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [August 27, 1981]

  Dear Mrs. Donaldson:

  I often think of Fern and wonder how she is faring. So it was good to get your letter and learn that the Donaldsons are still enjoying that pretty sloop. I wish I could accept your invitation to sail in her again, but time has stripped me of what little agility I used to have on the water. I’m too creaky now to indulge my love of sailing. Luckily I discovered recently that although I can no longer mess around in boats, I am still at home in a canoe on fresh-water ponds. For an old man, a canoe is ideal—he need only sit still and move his arms. My first boat was an Old Town green canoe, and my last boat is the same. In between there were many.

  Thank you for your kind letter.

  Sincerely,

  [E. B. White]

  To DR. ROOT

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [ca. September 7, 1981]

  Dear Dr. Root:

  The only hygiene lecture I recall from my college days is a film called “Fit to Fight,” a vivid story of venereal disease, shown to us burgeoning soldiers. The prospect was essentially gloomy: either you contracted a disease and weren’t fit to fight, or you stayed clean and got killed in battle. Every time the film was shown, a few in the audience fainted and had to be carried out of the hall.

  Thanks for the beautiful photograph. It is one of your best. I would like to be able to instruct you in finding a good literary agent, but my qualifications are not good. I never used an agent to place my stuff. I did it direct by sending my writings off in the mail to a periodical or a publishing house. That is still a good way. Katharine, who was an editor, knew several agents in New York, but I never had any dealings with them, except one who specialized in movie and dramatic rights. . . .

  Sincerely,

  [E. B. White]

  To SUSAN (LOVENBURG) ROBINSON

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  19 December 1981

  Dear Susan:

  Thanks for your letter, and please accept my felicitations on your engagement to Peter. Being a vet, he should start writing a book immediately, and the title should begin with the word “All.” This accomplished, your future is assured. When you see him, give him my best, and also remember me to Nasty, Joanie, Big Rosie, and Hermit. My experience with ruminant nutrition is vast: you go to the grain store and come away broke.

  I hope you had a good visit from Joan and the baby. My Christmas will be observed here in Brooklin—I’ll be dining at my son’s h
ouse, and I’m afraid my barnyard will be missing one goose.

  May your holidays be happy ones, from Syracuse to Winnipeg and back.

  Love,

  Andy

  XVI

  E. B. WHITE, A BIOGRAPHY

  1982–1985

  * * *

  • Scott Elledge had been at work on White’s biography since first suggesting it in the summer of 1968. By the time the final pages went into galley form, White was beginning to lose his eyesight. He reluctantly gave up his long-held newsbreaks job at The New Yorker and began putting his papers in order for the Cornell archives.

  To CAROLINE MAYHER

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [January 6, 1982]

  Dear Caroline:

  I want to let you and Bill know that the bowl of paperwhites burst into bloom a couple of days before New Year’s. The blossoms are beautiful, and their fragrance threatened to take over the whole living room. I love them, love the bowl, and love you for giving me such a refreshing Christmas gift. Katharine always started a bowl or two of narcissus, along with freesias, and I have missed them in the wintertimes since her death. So your gift was doubly welcome. Many thanks. I hope to get over soon to see Jenny and the bantams.

  I managed to get my grey geese back into the barn on the afternoon of January 1. They had defected. Flew down to the saltwater and celebrated the holidays plundering the rockweed.

  Love,

  Andy

  To SCOTT ELLEDGE

  North Brooklin, Maine

  26 February 1982

  Dear Scott:

  I was glad to get your letter with all the news. The winter has not stimulated me, it has scared me. I’ve known for quite a while that my retinas were degenerating, but I didn’t pay much attention to the matter because I wasn’t aware of any problem with my vision. Last November all this changed—my right eye went on the blink, and I began to lose my central vision. Reading and writing are difficult, and I do anything to avoid reading. My bad eye blurs everything and messes up the work my good eye is trying to accomplish. Sooner or later both eyes will go out on me. Then I won’t be able to drive a car or do much of anything else. I gather I will still have some peripheral vision—enough to keep me from knocking into things. So much for me.

  I’m glad for you that you were able to place your manuscript after such a long wait in the Harper office. All Corona said about the book to me was that it was much too long. Please don’t fail to let me see what use you have made of the classified stuff in my archive.

  I have just finished making small revisions and corrections in “One Man’s Meat” and have turned it over to Corona. Harper plans to reissue it in a new format as a companion volume to Letters, Essays, and Poems & Sketches. I am glad of this, as the text seems to stand up very well after forty years, and the book is still in print.

  Very likely I’ll soon resign my newsbreak job, after fifty-six years of doing the breaks every week. My eyes are already refusing the jump. I shall miss the newsbreaks, not because I think they are any great shakes but because they give me the illusion of being active and gainfully employed. They do not take a lot out of me, the way composition does, and I have come to rely on them for tranquilization or to steady my nerves on a bad morning. Also, they have kept me on the New Yorker’s payroll, and this has certain benefits.

  We’ve had a rough winter—much snow and sub-zero weather. Everybody has felt the pinch. The scallop fishermen have often had to remain in the harbor when they wanted to be out dragging. Many of the saltwater coves and harbors froze over, and in January, we lost all electrical power for a 3-day period—lights were out all over the county. I had to stay up half the night keeping wood fires alive in the stoves and fireplaces.

  If my health and my eyesight permit, I am going down to Florida again in April, with Corona. We plan to drive down and come back by train. But it’s all iffy at the moment—I won’t know till the time comes whether I can make it.

  Thanks for the letter, and give my best to Liane.

  Yours,

  Andy

  To WILLIAM SHAWN

  North Brooklin [Maine]

  April 26 [1982]

  Dear Bill:

  Because my eyes are failing me, I won’t be able to do newsbreaks any longer. In a way, I hate to quit—it’s been a long tour and, for me, a pleasant one. But it would be foolish for me to try to hang on against these mounting odds.

  I have a lot of breaks on hand—they piled up during my recent trip south. I will get at them right away and put them in the mail this week. Many thanks to you and the magazine for keeping me gainfully employed over such a long period of time.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To VREST ORTON

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [ca. April 26, 1982]

  Dear Mr. Orton:

  I remember your book on Frost and am sure it is here in this house, so there is no need to send me a copy. My eyesight is failing me, and finding a book is not as easy as it once was, but I keep at it. Glad you liked my introduction. I didn’t think much of it but had to settle for it anyway.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  • Roseanne Magdol, at age 19, had been a secretary for The New Yorker. Ralph Ingersoll had written an account of an office party, quoting her as saying she loved “to rub elbows with the great.” White used the episode as the basis for a casual piece, published in June 1927, titled “Rubbing Elbows.” It began: “My wife is at her best when she is rubbing elbows.”

  To ROSEANNE MAGDOL MCVAY

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [ca. April 30, 1982]

  Dear Roseanne:

  What a surprise—a letter from you! I had no idea I was helping young Barbadians with their writing. Barbarians yes, Barbadians no. I’ve never fully understood “The Elements of Style” myself, even though I am one of its authors. But I’ve been pleased at the way the book goes on selling. Macmillan managed to send my last royalty check by mistake to a guy named White in Indiana. I’m told he had a good time admiring it before he dutifully returned it.

  I am very sorry to learn that you lost your husband. I know what it is like to part company with a long-time spouse. This place makes very little sense without Katharine. Life for me has recently become infinitely more complicated because my eyes are failing me. One eye is no good at all, and the retina in the other eye is degenerating. I went to Boston a couple of weeks ago to see whether they could arrest the disease with laser beam. The answer is not clear, except that I have to wait until there has been more change in the retina. I gave up my newsbreak job that I’ve held for 56 years. Can’t see well enough to make it worth the effort.

  Hope your trip to the island was a pleasant one. And thanks for the report on the little book.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To MARK SINGER

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [May 7, 1982]

  Dear Mark:

  Thanks for your letter. Three thousand days is peanuts. Two weeks ago I quit my newsbreak job after 56 years—twenty thousand one hundred forty days not counting the leap years. You’ve got a long way to go. Steady on.

  I think your great-uncle did thank me for my letter. I never knew him but liked his stuff. My own funeral arrangements are shaping up well, as I am handling them myself. Got a piece of slate from Monson and divulged my first name and middle name to my stonecutter. Also date of birth. Haven’t been over to see the results yet but have it in mind to stop in at my convenience.

  Yrs,

  E. B. White

  To SCOTT ELLEDGE

  North Brooklin, Maine

  13 May 1982

  Dear Scott:

  I think you’d better send the first third of the MS right off. I can still see to read but don’t know how much longer that is going to last.

  I have a date with a retina man in Boston next Wednesday. It is possible that he may try laser beam to retard the progress of the disease. All depends on where the tr
ouble spot is. You have to be lucky.

  I’ll try to get the MS back to you promptly, but my Boston trip is going to bite into my time.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To SCOTT ELLEDGE

  North Brooklin, Maine

  25 May 1982

  Dear Scott:

  Your MS was waiting for me on return from Boston, where I was told that my bad eye is too far gone to be saved and my so-called good eye is not yet ripe for the laser beam treatment. To learn these simple facts I had to ride the belt line and take many tests, some of them exhausting. With what vision is left to me, I went to work on your piece. Congratulations on your manly attempt to make me into a literary character. It isn’t going to work, but it makes great reading. I was in stitches much of the way, recalling my Early Ineptitude, my Early Sorrows, my Immaculate Romancing. What a mess I was! No wonder my father worried about me. No wonder Alice was confused. It’s an ironical twist of fate that my eyesight is failing just as I was about to sit down and read all the books I’ve never read. I had hoped to become literary just as I was crossing the finish line. But it’s too late now. Can’t see to do it. I did read Huckleberry Finn once, years ago, you will be relieved to know. And two years ago I began A. Karenina and finished it fourteen months later.

  Hoping to be helpful, I made notes as I went through your piece and am submitting a list of fifty-three for your guidance or disdain. Most of them are mere typographical or factual trifles, but they might as well be set straight. Incidentally, I liked your Introduction. Have just finished writing one myself for the upcoming new edition of “One Man’s Meat,” and I know what a chore it is to introduce anything at all. I am grateful to you for letting me see the MS and for your willingness to subscribe to our arrangement about access to my papers.

  I have only one major request. The passage in which Alice’s handwriting is analyzed by a guy who fancies himself as a graphologist should be dropped from the book. . . . It is one thing for me to have sent it to her in a letter, for laughs, and is quite something else to make it public property in a book, where a lot of readers might accept it as a penetrating analysis. . . . I remember that would-be analyst, and I wouldn’t want him analyzing your handwriting, which is sometimes indecipherable.