Funny Letters From Famous People

by Charles Osgood

  San Mateo, Calif.

  December 19, 1935

  Dear Sir,

  May I not, as the late Woodrow Wilson used to say, call your attention to an editorial which appeared in your issue of December 9th under the caption “The Woollcott Menace”? It has found its way out to me here in San Mateo, out in the great open spaces where men are menace. And as it reiterates a frequently repeated allegation, I am experimenting, for the first time in some years, in the luxury of answering it—for publication or not, as you see fit.

  It is the substance of this editorial that as a recommender of books over the radio, I take advantage of a nationwide network to further the sale of soft, sentimental works. “Marshmallows” was the term employed. Since this series of broadcasts began, I have cast my oral vote for the following works:

  Paths of Glory, by Humphrey Cobb

  Life with Father, by Clarence Day

  North to the Orient, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Valiant Is the Word for Carrie, by Barry Benefield

  I Write as I Please, by Walter Duranty

  The Woollcott Reader, an anthology of seventeen

  authors ranging from J. M. Barrie to Evelyn

  Waugh.

  In addition to these there have been brief parenthetical bursts of applause for

  Death and General Putnam, by Arthur Guiterman

  Mrs. Astor’s Horse, by Stanley Walker

  It is quite impossible for any literate adult to think that this list represents pink publications for pale people. If these be “marshmallows,” then I am the Grand Duchess Marie.

  What interests me in this instance is the apparent lack of journalistic conscience manifested by the editorial I complain of. If that editorial was written by someone who would think of that list as so many marshmallows, it was the work of a fool. If it was written by someone who was not even familiar with what books I had recommended, it was the work of a knave. Neither alternative is agreeable for a colleague to contemplate. Of course, there is always the third possibility that your editorial writer is a nicely balanced mixture of the two.

  Yours sincerely,

  Alexander Woollcott

  Woollcott wrote to his friend Marian Stoll in 1942, prankishly from:

  The White House

  January 21, 1942

  Dear Marian:

  Under separate cover (which has always been our life in a nutshell) I have sent you two packs of playing cards because:

  (a) you said you wanted some

  (b) these, which were given me for Xmas, are not the kind I like and

  (c) they can be washed with soap and water.

  Personally I prefer washing my hands instead of the cards. I never soil cards because my hands are always pure, like my thoughts.

  Your old playmate,

  Alexander Woollcott

  Dorothy Parker

  DOROTHY PARKER sent the following telegram to a friend who had just had a baby after enduring a long, widely publicized pregnancy:

  Good work, Mary. We all knew you had it in you.

  Carl Sandburg

  IN A LETTER to his friend and fellow punster, Kenneth Holden, Carl Sandburg told this anecdote:

  May 19, 1945

  Dear Ken:

  Did you hear about the Nazi in Magdeburg who crept into a bomb-washed store where once in the heil-hitler days they sold picture frames and the poor goddamn Nazi licked off a mouthful of gold leaf from one of the frames? Two MPs watched him shiver in his guts and crumple up and die and one of the MPs said, “Suicide” and the other MP, “How could a little gold leaf like that kill a guy?” and the first one, “It wasn’t so much the gold leaf as he was smitten with a sense of inner gilt.”

  And you may be sure I hope and trust that we go on being a couple of sons of puns.

  As Ever,

  Carl

  Robert Benchley

  WHEN THE CELEBRATED HUMORIST Robert Benchley visited Venice, Italy, for the first time, he immediately dispatched a telegram to a friend. It has since become a classic:

  STREETS FULL OF WATER. PLEASE ADVISE.

  ROBERT BENCHLEY

  James Thurber and Samuel Goldwyn

  JAMES THURBER’S short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” became so well known that Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn decided that he wanted Thurber to be a writer on his staff. But Thurber was perfectly happy where he was, writing for The New Yorker and its famous editor Harold Ross. Thurber had absolutely no interest in going into the movie business. Goldwyn wrote him:

  I’ll pay you $500 a week.

  Thurber replied:

  Sorry, but Mr. Ross has met the increase.

  A series of exchanges ensued. Each time Goldwyn wrote, he offered Thurber more money, first $1,000 a week, then $1,500, and finally $2,500. Each time he got the same reply from Thurber:

  Mr. Ross has met the increase.

  After a long delay, Goldwyn wrote again, but this time, for some unknown reason, the offer had dropped back to $1,500. Thurber’s reply:

  I’m sorry, but Mr. Ross has met the decrease.

  James Thurber

  TWO NEW ORLEANS belles wrote to editor Ross in 1949 asking for a photograph of Thurber. Ross dutifully forwarded the letter to the author in Connecticut. Thurber replied:

  Dear ladies:

  Harold Ross, a timid man who is easily terrified, sent your letter on to me and I have been picking it up and putting it down. Nobody has been interested in my looks for a long time, including myself. I don’t have any pictures around, and I haven’t had any taken for many years, except by newspaper photographers and the like. Maybe a couple will turn up one of these days, and so I will keep your letter on file in a folder all by itself. Ross has a far more interesting face and there ought to be photographs of him in your city, since he worked on a newspaper there years ago. I am delighted, of course, that two southern belles know their way around in my books and would like to know what kind of man acts that way. Everybody else is writing for pictures of Montgomery Clift.

  Best wishes to you both.

  Sincerely yours,

  James Thurber

  A pair of avid Thurber readers wrote to ask him why he wrote what he wrote. His reply:

  You can tell where I get my ideas from the things I write, and then you will know as much about it as I do. To write about people you have to know people, to write about bloodhounds you have to know bloodhounds, to write about the Loch Ness monster you have to find out about it. I write because I have to write and it’s a good thing a writer gets paid. If I juggled because I have to juggle I couldn’t live. You will have to ask my readers why they read what I write. I hope they read it because it has something to say. You can also say that writers could get more written if they didn’t have to answer so many questions about why they write.

  Best wishes.

  Sincerely yours,

  James Thurber

  Here is Thurber’s humorous, avuncular letter to a Manhattan schoolchild named Robert Leifert, who wrote to request assistance on a school project.

  Dear Robert:

  Since a hundred schoolchildren a year write me letters like yours—some writers get a thousand—the problem of what to do about such classroom “projects” has become a serious one for all of us. If a writer answered all of you he would get nothing else done. When I was a baby goat I had to do all my own research on projects, and I enjoyed doing it. I never wrote an author for his autograph or photograph in my life. Photographs are for movie actors to send to girls. Tell your teacher I said so, and please send me her name.…

  One of the things that discourage us writers is the fact that 90 percent of you children write wholly, or partly, illiterate letters, carelessly typed. You yourself write “clarr” for “class” and that’s a honey, Robert, since “s” is next to “a,” and “r” is the line above. Most schoolchildren in America would do a dedication like the following (please find the mistakes in it and write me about them):

  To Miss Effa G. Burnsr />
  without who’s help

  this book could never

  of been finished it,

  is dedicated with

  gartitude by it’s

  arthur.

  Show that to your teacher and tell her to show it to her principal and see if they can find the mistakes.…

  Just yesterday a letter came in from a girl your age in South Carolina asking for biographical material and photograph. That is not the kind of education they have in Russia, we are told, because it’s too much like a hobby or waste of time. What do you and your classmates want to be when you grow up—collectors? Then who is going to keep the United States ahead of Russia in science, engineering, and the arts?

  Please answer this letter. If you don’t I’ll write to another pupil.

  Sincerely yours,

  James Thurber

  A representative of the Harvard Business School wrote Thurber in 1961 (the year he died) asking him to give a guest lecture. By that time Thurber, in his late sixties, was almost completely blind. He replied, from London:

  I had to give up public appearances when I became a hundred and went blind nearly twenty years ago, and, besides, I am now in Europe and in the Fall expect to be in Jeopardy.

  Thanks anyway, and all best wishes.…

  William Faulkner

  WILLIAM FAULKNER had a complicated, difficult life, which began with a thorny childhood and adolescence. He dropped in and out of schools, then the RAF (the U.S. Army wouldn’t have him), served as a postmaster and a scoutmaster, writing all the while. For the last half of 1925, when he was twenty-eight, Faulkner took the Grand Tour of Western Europe. He wrote his mother the following:

  Dear Moms,

  England was too dear for me. I walked some, saw quite a bit of the loveliest, quietest country under the sun, and have spent the last two days on a Breton fishing boat—a tub of a thing that rocks and rolls in a dead calm. We made a good haul, though, including two three-foot sharks which they killed with boat hooks. These people eat anything though: I don’t doubt but what I’ve eaten shark without knowing it, and liked it. A French cook can take an old shoe and make it taste good.

  Faulkner was noted for his reclusive, withdrawn nature. He lived in Oxford, Mississippi, and among his few close friends was the critic and writer Malcolm Cowley. He and Faulkner corresponded for many years, and in this letter Faulkner showed a rare sardonic sense of humor.

  Oxford, Miss.

  16 July [1948]

  Dear Brother Cowley:

  I had a letter from a Mr. Pearson at New Haven about coming there to make a talk, something. I have lost it and cant answer. He spoke of you in the letter; will you either send me his address or if you correspond with him my apologies for losing the address and that I don’t think I know anything worth 200 dollars worth talking about but I hope to be up East this fall though I still don’t believe I will know anything to talk about worth 200 dollars so I would probably settle for a bottle of good whiskey.

  If I come up, I would like to see you.

  Faulkner

  Faulkner once served as postmaster at the University of Mississippi. He decided to quit his job and tersely explained his reason for doing so in the following letter to the Postmaster General in Washington:

  As long as I live under the capitalist system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

  William Faulkner

  A Dr. Julius S. Bixler of Colby College invited Faulkner to receive an honorary degree in 1956. Faulkner’s response:

  Dear Dr. Bixler:

  Your letter of February 20th was at hand when I reached home today.

  I thank the Board of Trustees of Colby College very much for the honor proffered me, which I must decline for the following reason. I did not attend school long enough to receive even a certificate of graduation from elementary school. For me to receive an honorary degree from Colby College would be an insult to all those who have gained degrees by means of the long and arduous devotion commensurate with what any degree must be always worth.

  Thank you again for the honor proffered me.

  E. B. White

  ESSAYIST, NOVELIST, and grammarian E. B. White wrote this consummate letter of indignation to Con Ed, in response to a letter that would certainly alarm anyone:

  December 21, 1951

  Dear Mr. Aiken:

  I am a stockholder in the Consolidated Edison Company, and I rent an apartment at 229 East 48 Street in which there is a gas refrigerator. So I have a double interest in your letter of December 19. It seems to me a very odd letter indeed.

  You say that my refrigerator, even if it seems to be operating properly, may be producing poison gas, and you suggest that I open a window. I do not want to open a window. It would be a very unpopular move with the cook. Furthermore, I haven’t the slightest intention of living under the same roof with a machine that discharges poison gas. Your recommendation is that I get plenty of fresh air—enough to counteract the effect of the gas. But I cannot believe that you are serious.

  Will you be good enough to let me know what sort of poison gas is generated by a Servel gas refrigerator, and in what quantity, and how discharged. I know that there is a vent at the top of the machine and that some sort of warm air flows from the vent. I have always assumed it was hot air. Is it something else?

  I also know that a gas refrigerator poses a carbon problem, and I ask the landlord to remove the carbon about once a year, which he does. But your letter makes me think that the matter is not so simple and I am anxious to be enlightened.

  If gas refrigerators are, as your letter suggests, discharging poison gases into people’s homes I don’t want to own a gas refrigerator and I shall certainly sell my stock.

  Here’s White’s succinct, if cryptic, reply to an invitation extended by a Mr. J. Donald Adams:

  September 28, 1956

  Dear Mr. Adams:

  Thanks for your letter inviting me to join the committee of the Arts and Sciences for Eisenhower.

  I must decline, for secret reasons.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  White was once accused by the ASPCA of dodging tax on his dog. Here is his rankled and witty reply:

  12 April 1951

  Dear Sirs:

  I have your letter, undated, saying that I am harboring an unlicensed dog in violation of the law. If by “harboring” you mean getting up two or three times every night to pull Minnie’s blanket up over her, I am harboring a dog all right. The blanket keeps slipping off. I suppose you are wondering by now why I don’t get her a sweater instead. That’s a joke on you. She has a knitted sweater, but she doesn’t like to wear it for sleeping; her legs are so short they work out of a sweater and her toenails get caught in the mesh, and this disturbs her rest. If Minnie doesn’t get her rest, she feels it right away. I do myself, and of course with this night duty of mine … I haven’t had any real rest in years. Minnie is twelve.

  In spite of what your inspector reported, she has a license. She is licensed in the state of Maine as an unspayed bitch, or what is more commonly called an “unspaded” bitch. She wears her metal license tag but I must say I don’t particularly care for it, as it is in the shape of a hydrant, which seems to me a feeble gag, besides being pointless in the case of a female. It is hard to believe that any state in the Union would circulate a gag like that and make people pay money for it, but Maine is always thinking of something. Maine puts up roadside crosses along the highway to mark the spots where people have lost their lives in motor accidents, so the highways are beginning to take on the appearance of a cemetery, and motoring in Maine has become a solemn experience, when one thinks mostly about death. I was driving along a road near Kittery the other day thinking about death and all of a sudden I heard the spring peepers. That changed me right away and I sudd
enly thought about life. It was the nicest feeling.

  You asked about Minnie’s name, sex, breed, and phone number. She doesn’t answer the phone. She is a dachshund and can’t reach it, but she wouldn’t answer it even if she could, as she has no interest in outside calls. I did have a dachshund once, a male, who was interested in the telephone, and who got a great many calls, but Fred was an exceptional dog (his name was Fred) and I can’t think of anything offhand that he wasn’t interested in. The telephone was only one of a thousand things. He loved life—that is, he loved life if by “life” you mean “trouble,” and of course the phone is almost synonymous with trouble. Minnie loves life, too, but her idea of life is a warm bed, preferably with an electric pad, and a friend in bed with her, and plenty of shut-eye, night and day. She’s almost twelve. I guess I’ve already mentioned that. I got her from Dr. Clarence Little in 1939. He was using dachshunds in his cancer-research experiments (that was before Winchell was running the thing) and he had a couple of extra puppies, so I wheedled Minnie out of him. She later had puppies by her own father, at Dr. Little’s request. What do you think about that for a scandal? I know what Fred thought about it. He was some put out.

  Sincerely yours,

  E. B. White

  John Cheever

  SPEAKING OF ANIMALS, in 1961 John Cheever and his wife, Mary, were asked by their friend, writer Josephine Herbst, to take care of her cat. Cheever and the cat hated each other. The cat was a male whom Cheever named Delmore for the lugubrious poet Delmore Schwartz, and when the day came that Delmore began spraying the walls, Cheever promptly took him to the vet to be neutered.

  After two years with Delmore, Cheever decided it was time to write Herbst an update: