Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  I realize that I probably carry no clout in this request, because presumably you didn’t find the thing among my papers, since it was in a letter from me and therefore would be in Alice’s possession. Is that correct? And does Alice have an agreement with you about access? But whether I have any veto in this matter or not, I hope you’ll seriously consider my request. I don’t want your account of my crazy life to hurt any living person. As Henry Thoreau prophesied, I am still in love, and I love Alice.

  I look forward to the next installment. I shall stay tuned. Good luck!

  Yrs,

  Andy

  Notes from EBW:

  1. Spelling of Siwancy. I’m not sure, but it is not Sewancy.

  2. The statement “largely responsible” is an overstatement that I think you should avoid. I helped the NYer in many ways, but I was not “largely” responsible for the distinction of the magazine. Too many other vigorous people were involved.

  3. The White of Strunk and White thinks you should reword this sentence to read: “. . .began to suspect that I was waiting until after his death to publish the book.”

  4. My panic fear, as near as I can make out, is not of death. It is an amorphous fear, lacking in form.

  5. “doesn’t like to be touched.” Do you mean for money? I couldn’t be sure what this meant. I like to be touched by a pretty woman.

  6. My father commuted on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. There was another connection on the other side of Town—the Harlem Division of the New York Central, but we almost never used it.

  7. Stanley’s second name was Hart—for Grandfather William Hart. Albert’s middle name was Hunt, for (possibly) a minister.

  8. Please transpose. It’s “the dung and the dark.”

  9. I think the spelling is Barrett, but I’m not sure.

  10. Baseball, not football.

  11. “Red-haired.” My hair was brown. There were three redheads in the family—Marion, Stanley, and Lillian.

  12. I doubt that I was the “most beloved.” We were loved equally. But I was the baby of the family, and probably received a bit of extra attention on that score.

  13. I never knew anything about this episode in my father’s life. Was too young, and Father was probably quite close-mouthed about it. My guess is that although Father was pulling off a neat trick, he was doing what he believed would be for the best interest of the Company, knowing Leeds Waters.

  14. I couldn’t have “come to terms” with my memory of my father’s trauma, because I was never aware that he was in any kind of trouble. I can assure you that when I wrote the episode of the old cob crashing the music store, my father was not in my thoughts, even subconsciously. It was Corona Machemer who first told me, after reading your manuscript, that my father had been in a mess. Stan might have mentioned it, at one time in our life, but if he did I have no recollection of it.

  15. The factory that I visited—the one I remember—was in Harlem. But I do recall that there was something or other in East 40th Street. Was it a warehouse for the storage of pianos? I don’t know. But Father used to call that section of Manhattan “Corcoran’s Roost.” I remember that.

  16. It’s “Mersereau Avenue,” not Mercereau.

  17. I have no recollection of harboring an automobile while I was an undergraduate. I did have an Oldsmobile when I was young, but I can’t seem to see it in Ithaca.

  18. I had no fear of repeating father’s mistake. I never knew he made one. As for the old cob’s speech, his wordiness, there I think you are probably on solid ground. Father was quite a talker and didn’t hesitate to say in twenty words what could be said in six.

  19. Who she?

  20. I’ve had only one asthma attack. It was caused by my being in a home where there were cats, I think.

  21. Should “matter” be “matters”?

  22. I think the boat was built on the main floor of the barn, not in the loft. Unimportant.

  23. “Faculty” is the wrong word. I realized I had an urge.

  24. Stanley “and his wife.” I don’t recall Stan’s having a wife at Lake Placid, but maybe he did. I do recall my living alone in some sort of dorm.

  25. We didn’t “walk” uptown. I blew her to a ride on a Fifth Avenue bus.

  26. At six they returned to the station.

  27. By seven. . . .

  28. When I attended a Christmas Eve mass at the Catholic Church, it wasn’t in hopes of seeing Mildred Hesse, I was hoping I would catch a glimpse of Wilhemina Morris, sister of Chester Morris, who later became a movie star. My puppy loves were strong, but lacked constancy. Mildred was not a Catholic. She was a German girl, and probably a Lutheran. Miss Morris was a Catholic. I am not sure of the spelling of her first name.

  29. It was a double room. My roommate was Hubert Race.

  30. “Salary.” In my day, Sun editors were not paid a salary. We held shares of stock in the company. I received a big check in my junior year (it came as a complete surprise) and another, much bigger one, in my senior year. The Sun made money. I wasn’t aware of this—thought I was working for the love of it. I can still see Miss Holland’s face when she walked into my office and handed me a check for several thousand dollars—as though she had just laid an egg.

  31. Seems to me you should delete the quotes and put “they” in lower case.

  32. My meeting with Ochs was rigged by Aunt Ruby, the wife of Uncle Pete Smith. I didn’t really want to visit the great man, but I felt obliged to keep the date because Mrs. Smith had gone to a lot of trouble on my behalf.

  33. Spelling. Mersereau. Not “Street,” Avenue.

  34. Mersereau Avenue.

  35. I think this whole passage about the handwriting analysis by that self-styled graphologist should come out. See my covering letter.

  36. My father did not give me the car. I bought it. I still have the bill of sale.

  37. Iron, not steel.

  38. Avenue, not Street.

  39. Transpose. “Father’s a hand organ man, is he.”

  40. I have no recollection of entertaining thoughts of elopement at this point. But you could be right.

  41. Post Intelligencer.

  42. Gay Street was where Helms lived in New York. In Seattle they lived in a house on Lake Washington at the end of a trolley line.

  43. My items were not limited to two sentences, as I remember it. They had to be very short, but I worked in poems of several lines. Sneaked them in.

  44. The job was “night saloonsman.”

  45. My pay on the Buford was not $50 a week. It was nearer $50 a month.

  46. Mersereau.

  47. I think it was a Hudson, not a Maxwell.

  48. Mitchell T. Galbreath.

  49. J. H. Newmark.

  50. The thirty dollars was for half a week’s work. I ended up with two jobs—half a week at the NYer for thirty dollars, half a week at J. H. Newmark for thirty. Total take $60.

  51. Back hair. Not black. K’s hair was brown.

  52. Katharine is spelled wrong here, but you are quoting Ross and I think he did sometimes misspell her name.

  53. I doubt that Samuel and Jessie [White] read a poem in the World. They didn’t buy the World, and they didn’t read literary columns in newspapers.

  To JON AND CINDY STABLEFORD

  North Brooklin, Maine

  May 25, 1982

  Dear Jon and Cindy:

  I mustn’t let another day go by without my telling you what I think of you. For an old man to try to face up to Boston when his eyes aren’t working and his ears aren’t working and his mind doesn’t go round any more is a staggering prospect. But you made it all possible and easy and into the bargain gave me such a good time. I am glad I went, even though the news was not all good, and I thank you again for your tender loving care.

  It was great to visit you again in your lovely home and to renew my acquaintance with Jennifer and Jason. Andover certainly put on her prettiest dress to welcome me, and you made me feel comfortable every minu
te of the time. I hope I didn’t overstay my time by taking that last extra day, but I felt so tired when I got back from the city I hated to think of having to get started home without a rest.

  I want to thank Cindy for being my guide through the intricacies of the Retina Associates, where I would certainly have got lost without help. I want to thank Jon again for piloting me to Brunswick, building martinis, and showing me all over Andover. I loved riding Jenny’s ten-speed bike and am thinking of equipping myself with one some day soon. You were all just wonderful to me, and I am extremely grateful. I wish we could see each other more often.

  My little broody bantam hen greeted me on my return with eight parti-colored chicks the size of baby partridges. They were waiting for me in the hay loft where she had hatched them. I brought them down safely to the barn floor, put them in a cage made of chicken wire, and then discovered that they were so tiny they could creep through the one-inch mesh. My goose is still sitting tight—she is due to hatch her goslings on Saturday. She was on twelve eggs when I left here last week, but one egg has mysteriously disappeared. We have an enemy in the barn cellar, and I don’t believe it’s a rat. Here likely a weasel. Peas are up in the garden, and we are already feasting on asparagus and rhubarb. Lilacs are ready to burst.

  I’ve got to run now and register my little dog Susy with the town clerk. Thanks again for a lovely visit and for your kindness in a hard time.

  Love to all,

  Andy

  To VREST ORTON

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [ca. June 1982]

  Dear Mr. Orton:

  Thank you for letting me see your letter about modern poetry. I think to write poems that have no form is dull sport, except for someone like Don Marquis, who had talent. Poets talk to each other, for the most part, and they are forever trying a new language and then staying with it for a while.

  The problem will soon be solved for me, as I am losing my central vision and will not be able to read.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To SCOTT ELLEDGE

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  June 16, 1982

  Dear Scott:

  Here are more notes for you, along with a few general suggestions.

  I feel that the manuscript, even with the cutting you have done, is too long. The horrid truth is, my life is not all that interesting. I kept falling asleep over it, even though it was my life. In your fever of discovery, in the excitement of the chase, you seem to have reached the point where you thought that anything that happened to me was interesting.

  In many places you go into great detail about almost nothing at all. My financial arrangements with Ross and the NYer are a dull dish, looked at coolly. I think you should continue cutting.

  I’m glad you exhumed my review of Anne Lindbergh’s “The Wave of the Future.” I’ve always liked that piece but never heard much about it from anybody. Anthologists avoid it to a man. I think the whole business about K’s divorce . . .badly needs a few introductory sentences in which you paint the backdrop for these events. The 1920s was a gaudy decade that I don’t need to tell you about. . . . It’s as though you were writing about the millions of modern young couples by describing them as “living in sin” when what they are doing of course, is living a la mode. The 1920s was an explosive period of social breakdown into which almost all who lived at that time got drawn. Prohibition really triggered it, with its bootleggers and speakeasies, so that everyone was breaking the law when he sat down to a meal. Over in the North River, the transatlantic liners sounded their horns of departure, and the citizens listened uneasily to this midnight invitation to revelry, debauchery, and escape. . . . I’m not trying here to defend or condone the times or the events, but there was a contagion in the air, and I think you need to set the stage briefly. . . . And not use words out of the Bible. . . .

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To SCOTT ELLEDGE

  North Brooklin [Maine]

  August 25 [1982]

  Dear Scott:

  Thanks for “the rest of the book.” Here are the rest of my notes. Now I can rest.

  1. “had decided” is the wrong verb here. I didn’t “decide” to write a lot of stuff about world government, I drifted into it after reading a book by Emery Reves. I was trying to tidy up a world I knew very little about.

  2. “provided” should read “located.” When you say provided, it sounds as though the New Yorker paid the rent.

  3. Mary Osborn’s home town was Birmingham, Alabama, and I hadn’t the slightest desire to see it. I took a walk in the Shenandoah because I was feeling restless. I did take a look at Buena Vista, the school she had gone to, since I was in the vicinity.

  4. Spelling of Gramercy.

  4A. It’s Pathways of Sound. Not in Sound.

  5. I don’t recall Katharine’s having suggested Julie Harris, but you may be right.

  6. I don’t think it’s true that I decided that my venture into political thinking had been a mistake. I knew I was in over my depth but was on the right track. I continued to try political themes—“The Shape of the UN” (1956), “Unity” (1960).

  7. The designer was not my son, it was Aage Nielson.

  8. No, a Steinway /aby /rand. Better just say “on the piano.”

  [9–28 more notes on small matters . . .]

  29. I did not spend a night in the Boston Ritz while working on Trumpet. I didn’t have to, as K and I had been there together several times and I was familiar with the place. I found out how much 12 watercress sandwiches cost by enlisting the aid of a friend who had a jewelry store in the Ritz building. Sorry to cheat you of this sentence, but the whole thing is apocryphal.

  30. Have it your own way, but when I wrote Trumpet I knew nothing about what you call “the deception of Leeds Waters.” Or had forgotten what little I knew.

  31. The correct version is, “Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.”

  32. Katharine never became totally blind. Her vision was failing fast toward the end of her days, and she could not read for pleasure. But she could see her way around a room.

  33. You don’t want the “E. B. White” signature at the end, do you? It must have got in by mistake.

  34. The facts here are not right. The passage should read something like this:

  In 1980, to celebrate his eighty-first birthday, White borrowed a canoe from his doctor, lashed it on top of his car, and drove over to Great Pond, the Belgrade lake on which, seventy years before, he had received a green Old Town canoe from his father—a gift for his birthday. On the way to the lake, White stopped to pick up Corona Machemer, his young editor at Harper’s, who was visiting her family in North Belgrade and who had accepted his invitation to join him in camp for a few days of swimming and boating. Miss Machemer herself was celebrating a birthday—her 38th. The trip was a success, the weather smiled, and the canoe, which leaked only slightly, could have been called Summer Memories, for both White and his guest had grown up in the Belgrade region and had a lot to remember.

  On their way back from camp, Miss Machemer, who knew that White had quit sailing and had abandoned the sea, said, “You ought to buy a canoe.” When he got home, White thought it over and bought one—a modern plastic boat with which he was immediately dissatisfied. It lacked everything he liked in a canoe. He never even bothered to put it in the water—left it bottom-up on saw horses outside the barn, and later carried it up to Old Town, Maine, and traded it for what he has described as “a most beautiful 15-foot wood-and-canvas canoe called The Trapper.” Miss Machemer has since shared his delight in the classic Maine model, for she feels about the lakes as White does. Less than half his age, she was born a few days before his lucky birthday, which is the 11th day of the 7th month.

  If you plan a Coda, such as you suggest in your letter, I will need to see the form it takes. Our best bet is for me to give you a quick rundown of my life in these twilight years. Here it is.

  When Katharine died,
I busied myself tidying up my life, my house, my affairs, and my literary properties. I had no desire to write any more but felt a compulsive need to straighten out what I had already accomplished. My body was already showing signs of cracking up. My heart frequently went out of rhythm. The retinas in both eyes were degenerating from senility. My hearing was fading. My joints were painful from arthritis. My blood pressure was high, my spirits low. I could no longer read for pleasure. I could no longer do the newsbreaks for the New Yorker and had to quit the job I had held for 56 years. Despite these disabilities, I tried to remain active. I took to visiting Florida briefly, fall and spring, for the good swimming in warm salt water—which has always benefited me and my jerky head.

  Most of my friends were dead or dying. I am not much of a host, and on Katharine’s death I gave up having people in to dinner or a party and resigned myself to the life of an elderly recluse. Before the death of Katharine, Corona Machemer had showed up here in our house to help with the assembling of the book of Letters, to edit it, and to write the text of the apparatus. She was the oldest daughter of a Colby professor, was a typical New York career girl, a gifted editor (one of the best “pencil editors” I’ve ever watched at work) and in general made herself useful and agreeable around the house. I found her easy to get on with.

  One spring (or maybe it was one fall) when I was planning a visit to Sarasota, I asked Corona if she’d drive me south and stick around for a few days of work and play—we were assembling a new collection of my stuff. I was having trouble driving a car because, with my failed vision, I was subject to eye-strain, and the eye strain made me drowsy. It was no longer safe for me to drive long distances alone. Somewhat to my surprise, she accepted. The visit was a short one but a good one—with working, swimming, cycling, and (for her) shelling. I discovered that she approved of the sun and the sea. As time went on, we indulged ourselves in more of these brief working-vacations. Having her as a companion has been a great boon for me, for she soon became my eyes, my ears, and my decision-making apparatus.